Before John Denver captured the majesty of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River in his immortal country song, Jefferson saw it first.
Source: Notes on the State of Virginia, Query IV A Notice of its (Virginia’s) Mountains
In addition to being a great statesman and writer, Jefferson had a heart for the outdoors. His descriptions of his homeland Virginia are fun to read because his enthusiasm makes the words leap off the page. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson provides vibrant descriptions of the rivers and mountains that surrounded him. Though he was writing to answer the queries of a French diplomat, his writing reads less like the relation of dry facts and more like an enthusiastic recommendation to a friend.
His description of Harper’s Ferry (now West Virginia) provides a window into the attentive and artistic manner in which Jefferson viewed the natural world:
“The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain an hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac, in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass it off to the sea.”
I love how the rivers are living things in Jefferson’s words — they are “in quest of passage” and they meet to “rush together against the mountain” and “rend it asunder.” I can imagine Jefferson standing somewhere along these two rivers, breathing in the mountain air, contemplating the scene with the eye of a trained artist.
“The mountain being cloven asunder,” he continues, “She presents to your eye, through the clef, a small catch of smooth blue horizon…inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below.”
Several decades after the Notes were published, artist William Roberts captured Harper’s Ferry in a painting. It was gifted to Jefferson, where it hung in the dining room at Monticello. You can view the painting here.
Secondary Sources Consulted
University of Virginia Library Online Exhibits | Landmarks of American Nature Writing