I grew up in the Bermuda Triangle of Virginia: born and raised in Alexandria, went to Mr. Jefferson's University, and years later, with family in tow, had a delightful time trying to sell our restored farm-house on the Northern Neck. It started as a dilapidated waterfront farmhouse -- a restoration project on Mosquito Creek.
You’d think we would have caught on with the Creek name connection … Looking out over the Creek to the spit of land dotted with duck blinds, I asked the real estate agent, "What kind of name is Mosquito Creek? Anything to do with all these mosquitoes?" Our real estate agent glibly replied in that distinct rural Virginian accent, "Just rained. . . It’s an Indian name. Antipoison Creek's just there over across the road. Where John Smith was healed from the sting ray barb..."
Nothing like standing in History to take your mind off the present, eh? What is it that we can't wa(r)sh away the deep stains of Virginia so thoroughly ground into our soul? How is it that we can watch the HBO series, John Adams, and see our beloved Jefferson move about like the mute mime guy in the comedy duo of Penn and Teller ... but still hold back tears of compassionate conductivity because they were all serious about Liberty? Liberty was a life and death matter to them. What does it mean to us now?!
It seemed like farmers then were part of the vanguard, integral to a movement that could uplift the status of all mankind. And their offspring, who migrated to the cities, had a bit more of an horizon’l perspective than waiting for the next natural catastrophe so they could get a new pick-up with the insurance money.
Given the caked-mud realities of the political motivations of the electorate in rural America (i.e., we elect people who ask us to do as they say, not as they do), what is pulling me towards the Virginia mountains? To a land where my strangeness (i.e., progressiveness) would have to constantly hidden so that I wouldn’t get shorted the next time I’d buy Silver Queen corn?
Are these folk Hobbits, entrenched in their provincialism, protected from the outside world by a mental attitude that is not neutral (so they think)? Do they hide behind the wall of recent memories (one or two generations), certain that this will hold back the dark forces of Mordor? They pin their hopes on Sauron simply looking over their heads, ignoring the intrinsic wealth buried beneath them?
