Christmas Rush is Over

Fishing Pier on the Maryland side 

Photo: Ileana Johnson

It’s a chilly but sunny day in late December. Christmas rush finally passed and the skirmish to buy a loved one that perfect gift has ended – the constant flurry of delivered and sometimes lost packages, seemingly joyful but hurried crowds, the constant strangling traffic on all roads, fewer and fewer decorations and Merry Christmas wishes in stores, and even less cheer in people’s hearts. But the children were happy, oblivious to reality and drowning in gifts from everyone, scattered toys all over the floor, and discarded empty boxes in the driveway.

Churches provided angel gifts to the local needy children who asked for the latest electronic gadgets but got toys and clothes instead; one lone Salvation Army red bucket was collecting financial donations.

Grocery stores were asking for food and money donations for disadvantaged children, the same children who a few months ago had caught the interest of the all-knowing leftist media, railing against their obesity and excessive meat intake and other harmful foods distributed in schools or by eager-to-please and overwhelmed parents.

The Christmas songs of my youth have been replaced by modern PC versions of happy holidays, rap, and other personal and distorted renditions of songs that are allowed on the radio waves by the PC police.

If one atheist group or person claimed that they were offended by traditions and God, out went the Christmas tree, the ornaments, the Nativity Scene, the reference to Christ, everything was scrapped and sent to the dusty shelves of offensive history ruled by the “diversity” police that scoped hate before it even happened.  

Freestone Point

Photo: Ileana Johnson

Seagulls rookery on the Potomac shore

Photo: Ileana Johnson

It’s peaceful again, so it seems, and I escape to my beloved woods and the river. It’s a serene silence interrupted by nature’s sounds, the gurgling of water, the waves lapping at the shore, the sea gulls squawking, the rustling of the carpet of dead leaves beneath squirrels darting about, and the chirping of hopping birds.

Fishing pier view from the battery

Photo: Ileana Johnson

I don't think this squirrel missed many meals

Photo: Ileana Johnson

I counted eight grey squirrels so far, more than I’ve ever seen in the woods before. One portly Chip or perhaps Dale, was cracking nuts on a branch, a quite plump specimen that did not seem to have missed any meals. Perhaps the fishermen on the pier below had fed them if they were brave enough to make their way down half a mile to the river’s bank.

Fairfax home chimney of 1825

Photo: Ileana Johnson

I pass by the lone chimney, the ruins left from the Fairfax family home built here in 1825. Captain Henry Fairfax purchased the 2,000-acre property from Alfred Lee, the grandson of Henry Lee II. Henry and his third wife Elizabeth lived and raised seven children here from 1825 until their deaths in 1847. They are buried further up the hill in an enclosed cemetery covered in a thick carpet of dry leaves. In 1849 the $16,253 property, with twenty-four slaves, was left to his children, Martha and John Walter.

Potomac River shore on the Virginia side

Photo: Ileana Johnson

John inherited the portion of the plantation that is now Leesylvania State Park. John Walter Fairfax joined the Confederate Army and General James Longstreet’s staff. John Walter returned to live in Leesylvania after his wife’s death where he rebuilt his father’s residence and lived there until his death in 1908. I find it curious that his home burned shortly after his death. If only the still-standing brick chimney, weathered by time, could talk!

Civil war cannon facing the river

Photo: Ileana Johnson

Up the bluff at Freestone Point, with a spectacular view now partly obscured by scraggly bushes and a few dormant trees, there is a civil war cannon preserved from the original Gun Battery. This northernmost battery was a decoy along a six-mile front. The more effective batteries were located down river at Possum Point, Cockpit Point, and Evansport.

What's left of the battery at Freestone Point

Photo: Ileana Johnson

Confederate General Robert E. Lee issued orders on August 22, 1861 to blockade the Potomac River’s sailing channel. The Confederates effectively closed commercial traffic on the Potomac by December 1861 and maintained the blockade until March 9, 1862.

From the diary of Sgt. Wilmot Walter Curry, we know that the Freestone Point battery contained two rifled six-pounders and an eleven-foot-long thirty-pounder cannon known as “Long Tom,” captured at Manassas plains. Sgt. Curry described one such battle on September 25, 1861 when “the Lincolnite men of war,” floating on the Potomac, engaged the battery eleven times before the Confederates answered with their own guns. Fortunately, there were no casualties on either side.

Bluff over Potomac where the battery was located

Photo: Ileana Johnson

The view from the battery bluff today overlooks a fishing pier, quite busy on most days – one third of it is in Virginia and two-thirds in Maryland. How exactly does one measure the distance of ownership over the flowing river?