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A Special Kind Of Place — The Six Acres

Rosie on a recent walk on the old six acres.

When I was a kid, I spent a good part of my youth walking my Uncle George’s six acres in Fluvanna. That’s what we called it, the six acres.  To my cousin and me, it was a whole world. My grandfather Carl loved it as did my dad. This farmland, sometimes planted with hay, had an old apple orchard on the far side. It was located next to the Fluvanna Church — the old one just north of Fluvanna.  The six acres had several wonders — a long unpaved road leading past the woods to the three sisters’ wells, a dank swamp with a mysterious and dangerous past, and several long hayfields leading to a hill with both a fox hole and a bear den. In my youth, these were fascinations beyond measure.

Sometimes we rode horses there too from Gene Cederquist’s stable on Strunk Road through the pine forest to the three sisters wells and on down the unpaved road into Fluvanna. To do this we had to cross the highway at one point–old Route 17 — at that time, the main road up that side of Chautauqua Lake. The horse’s hooves made such a racket on the cement and paved roads; we were careful not to let them trot or canter there for fear they would hurt themselves.  Then we would stop in the front yard of my grandmother’s house so that our loved ones could come out and say hello, give the horses a carrot, smile at us.

Those horses at Cederquist’s were not the prettiest around but I loved them just the same. Many of them were half work horse, no doubt, with mighty legs and hooves, no discernible pasterns and rough gaits. But I never rode one that wasn’t fun to ride and kind to all, young and old. God bless horses; they are such tender hearted beasts. The saddles we used were always too big for us and the stirrups too long so that by the end of the ride, our knees were raw and our thighs ached for days afterwards.  But every bounce was worth it.

My cousin Barb and I would stop near the cemetery at Fluvanna to let the horses graze a bit. We would get off and chew on a piece of timothy hay, musing as we did.  She told me later in life that she was afraid to ride, actually, but did it because I loved to do it.  I thought that was so brave of her. When I think back now, I can’t recall any moment when she ever looked or acted afraid.  I think that’s real courage.

My family enjoyed the varied landscape of the six acres in all weathers, even preferred it perhaps in the dead of winter when we could see every step left in the snow, when the hawks circled above the skeletal trees and the crows cawed from their secret places. It was a muddy trek in spring when even the mostly passable road became a sea of muck. It was on one of those windy March walks that my grandfather told us about the quicksand there in the Fluvanna woods “in the olden days” long before he came to this country.

My son Aryl as a child with our dog Kazak at one of the three sisters’ wells.

“Ja,” he would say, looking out over the landscape, stepping carefully in his half calf green rubber hunting boots, “once there was quite a swamp here.” He pointed out over the remaining woods back towards Route 17 and his home in Fluvanna. “The story is that when this road was first built — and it was a literal plank road built of lumber — the whole road would disappear overnight into the swamp. It’s said a buggy was lost that way, though I don’t know what happened to the horse! And even later, after cars started driving the road, it was said more than one car was swallowed up by the quicksand there.”

My grandfather was no fabulist; he was a hard working factory man and musician. So I believe him about the mysterious Fluvanna swamp. In my later years I made some forays into the woods that lie between the old unpaved road (it’s gone now entirely) and the old plank road, looking for quicksand. I found an old shack, unpainted, roof falling in; I found a number of old fence posts half submerged in mud and water.  I saw the water like a pond stretched across a half acre of bog. The woods were silent around me. It was a dark place and a fetid one. I was fascinated with the place nonetheless. And I was respectful of that swamp, of what lay beneath, with every footfall. The original plank roads were constructed of black ash covered with mud. It seems possible the early roads sank beneath the muck and that the swamp seemed bottomless.

I have researched this story and found some substantial evidence to support the notion of missing buggies and cars, parts of the old plank roads that sunk not just here in Fluvanna but all the way to Westfield. The water table in Chautauqua County lies very high and even elevations can be boggy, which seems contrary to logic. There’s something fey there, in that boggy wood, and all my life I’ll remember walking the land with my father and grandfather and riding horseback with my cousin Barb across the fields and through those woods.

When my children were young, we walked there too with our beloved dog Kazak near the three sisters’ wells. We often saw muskrat, who had made homes in the little creeks under the bridges there. We saw deer and sometimes fox. I remember the rabbits in the snow and the occasional jackrabbit, standing tall in the hay. We learned to love and respect wildlife there. My father and my grandfather both gave up hunting there, each on a different fall day, rapt in conscience.

It’s long gone now. A new street has been built filled with houses. Route 86 cuts right through the old pine path where we rode horseback. It’s one of those places that lives only in memory.

The Sherwin Six Acres today is pictured in the background. Photos by Sandy Robison

I still walk there at the old Fluvanna cemetery. My memories of this land are rich with family love and lore and our pets through the years who were family too. My uncle’s six acres were donated to the cemetery because the Sherwins were one of the oldest families who settled there in Fluvanna. My uncle thought it fitting to leave the acreage to the cemetery association when he died. Now though we visit the graves of our loved ones, who lie here within view of the lake. Our mother is here and our stepfather Fred; our grandparents Forsberg. Our aunt and uncle Sherwin. My cousin’s grandparents Sherwin. And several of our friends from youth who died young.

I think of the land as ours still — though it never was, really. And every time I’m there for a walk with my sister and our dogs for a Sunday walk, we recall our childhoods, our loved ones, and how much we love this land. It’s a sacred spot for us. What is it about land that enchants us? It keeps us grounded to our past. It holds our loved ones and our memories. It’s there long before us and long after. We are the caretakers and the passers by.

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