It will be Fall this afternoon, officially, though driving through the Virginia countryside you can see that it has already arrived here. The hay-bales are stacked, some of them painted bright seasonal orange, and the advertising for the haunted hay-rides are sprinkled along Route 33 and the Zachary Taylor Highway that brought me, eventually, to Refuge Farm.
I was in a pensive mood that matched the sky and the gray paint of the Panzer. The day had started sunny and mild, and I had volunteered to go down to Williamsburg to help a pal with some chores. He is fighting something so big that it is almost overwhelming and anything his friends can do, we will do.
As a happy side benefit of our morning email exchanges, my pal Pete also agreed to come up from his place in Chesapeake, and a good, if sobering, time was held by all.
You can say that life has piled on him. I won’t be specific, except to say that he is fighting for his life on several fronts and he is fighting hard and with grace. He is my hero.
Anyway, he passes along a really important concept about how we should view life. “Carpe Diem,” he says. Live it while you can. Only when someone tells you the number of the days that remain does the reality really intrude, and if you decide to fight, that is all there is to do.
Anyway, we did yard work and some power washing on the nice house on the golf course, and after an ice tea to close out the working day, John wanted to give us a tour of the community.
Governor’s Land at Two Rivers is Williamsburg’s only private country club community. Physically, it is locate in the Historic Triangle of Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown, and just minutes from the College of William & Mary.
If you wanted a place that is more historic in America, I am highly dubious that you can find one. The community is upscale; John and his wife bought a lot here years ago before they erected the marvelous open home with polished wood floors and well-selected appurtenances.
The Tom Fazio-designed course wanders through the development. There is a well-protected private marina and yacht club, secure but not gated, the community occupies a spectacular waterfront setting with awe-inspiring sunsets over the James and Chickahominy Rivers.
John took us on a windshield tour before the rain came and the road beckoned for his volunteer labor force. We drove around the fine houses and manicured lawns that are mirrored by the magnificent green of the golf course. Pete was driving, and John directed him to stop put on the emergency flashers.
“You guys get out and walk over and read that plaque. That is why the clubhouse is not on the 18th Green.”
Pete and I clambered out and walked over to look at the raised metal words.
“Holy crap!” exclaimed Pete. I read along with him.
“The confluence of the James and Chickahominy rivers about six miles from where America’s first permanent English colony was founded in 1607 and within what was known after 1619 as the “Company Land,” whose income was intended to benefit the Virginia Company of London.”
Apparently during the initial site preparation for the course, artifacts were found that placed one of the first immigrant support barracks in English-speaking North America was directly under our feet. Nearby the remains of local Paspahegh people were reinterred after their graves were discovered in the dig.
A large Indian village had been located here as well, and first identified by none other than John Smith in his early explorations of the Middle Neck of Virginia. The Paspaheghs were part of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom and were the Powhatan group closest to Jamestown during the earliest years of English settlement.
The full spectrum of the Virginia experience was contained below the neatly trimmed fairway and green at the edge of the Chickahominy River, since it is also the location of possibly the earliest slave quarters found in Virginia.
(Several objects from this late-17th/early 18th-century slave site, including a brass buckle, brass spoon bowl, shark’s tooth and pipe. Photo Governor’s Land.)
We were filled with awe as we got back in the car. John directed us around to tour the marina and we did the suitable oohs and ahs over the house with all the glass, right at the mouth of the harbor and the Sag Harbor motor-yacht moored to the seawall alongside. Then presented us with commemorative shirts to remember the occasion.
“It won’t be the last time we are here,” I said when we shook hands in farewell.
“Not on your life, John,,” said Pete.
“Carpe Diem,” said John.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
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Twitter: @jayare303