Morning Ride - Graves Mill, Virginia

In This Place: Graves Mill, Virginia - Part Three

My last visit to Graves Mill was on a lovely Sunday morning earlier this month. As I was walking around photographing in the clear morning light, large pick-up trucks pulling horse trailers began to arrive. Soon there were a half dozen trailers parked along the road, and people were greeting acquaintances and riding companions as they unloaded horses and saddled up. It was a friendly group, and I introduced myself and spent some time talking with them. One of the things that frequently comes up when you talk to people around Graves Mill is the 1995 flood and how it shaped the surrounding landscape.

We live in a time of rapid change and growth, and sometimes take for granted the transformation of a wooded area into a shopping center, or farmland into a housing development. Over the years, Graves Mill has been changed by the hand of man. The mill was built, houses and stores sprang up around the mill, and roads developed to facilitate commerce.

Natural forces are constantly at work changing the landscape as well. These changes are usually slow, but sometimes nature produces dramatic change, as it did in Graves Mill in 1995. The flood altered the course of the Rapidan River and reshaped the land, erasing many of the man made changes that had accumulated over the years.

Fifteen years after the flood, the scars are still visible from miles away where the mountain slopes sloughed off in the massive debris flows triggered by the flood waters. Those scars are healing, but the very shape of the mountains was changed overnight.

Since its invention over 150 years ago, photography, with its unique ability to record exactly how a place looks at a given moment, has recorded and made visible this process of change. Comparing photos of the same place taken years apart help us comprehend  the effect of change, both natural and man-made, on our world.

After the riders had departed to explore the mountain trails in the nearby Shenandoah National Park, I continued to photograph Graves Mill. The morning was clear and cool. The red-buds and dogwoods were in bloom and the only sound was the water flowing over the rocks in the river. On this still and peaceful morning,  it was easy to imagine that Graves Mill had always been and would always be like this. But with each click of the shutter, I realized that I was recording a unique moment. Stretching away on either side of that single moment, the past and the future are all about change.

The Miller's House - Graves Mill, Virginia

This pre-Civil War residence is now the Old Mill House Bed and Breakfast. Their website has some interesting history and photographs of Graves Mill.