Last year, I rarely went to the river. It was not until the fall that I finally made my way down to Pony Pasture. I was amazed to see the number of people floating down the river, kayaking, and just laying out in the sun. This was incredible for me to see, mainly because the Merrimack River near my house is not nearly as populated. Very few people would dare swim in it. Therefore, the fact that there are signs and people promote hanging out and being involved with the river is very cool!
This past weekend I was able to explore the river further by making my way down to the annual Splash and Dash that is held right here on the James. I have never seen anything like this before. I have been to many running races and I have seen many triathlons, but this race seemed unique to me. This race had people from the age 9 to 61 come out and be apart of the river for a day. The most interesting part of this was the number of people that came out to take part in something in their city. This to me showed the immense amount of pride people have in not only being from the city of Richmond, but also in the James River Park System. While the river itself is relatively well promoted, I believe that our final project this semester could help raise awareness.
In order to better define the James River Park System, people need to understand what it means to be connected. We can no longer think of the different access points as separate entities. We must find a way to connect these places, for people to better understand the system. Ecologically, these places are extremely interconnected, but now we must find a way to define connectivity in the system amongst ourselves.
I like were you are going with this last paragraph. The social value of connecting access points would be an excellent theme to develop into an essay. You allude to the ecological connectivity as a model. How are they connected ecologically? How does the ecology tie in to the human use? Are there examples of social trails that you could draw on from the reading (e.g. the Gwynns Falls Trail)? Great idea. Paragraphs could be improved by focusing them on related topic sentences. Glad that you made it down to the Splash and Dash. What a great event!