{"id":3003,"date":"2019-04-29T08:32:14","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T12:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/?p=3003"},"modified":"2019-05-08T11:16:27","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T15:16:27","slug":"golden-hour-at-pony-pasture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/2019\/04\/29\/golden-hour-at-pony-pasture\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Hour at Pony Pasture"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sunset attracts a crowd of admirers below Pony Pasture Rapids on the James River. (Photo by Gabi Williams)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

By Gabi Williams<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It was “golden” hour\u2014late on a spring day\u2014and every detail of the James River suddenly seemed radiant and magical in the light of late afternoon. I was walking the riverbank with a young woman named Sally Watanabe, who was telling me why this place, Pony Pasture Rapids, is one of her favorite spots in Richmond, Virginia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are normal people here, not just students,” she says. There’s also a lot to discover. \u201cIf you run the trail [southeast] from Pony Pasture, there\u2019s a bridge that goes into the wetlands, which is very cool area to explore. And if the weather is nice, the rocks here are ideal for spending time with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sally Watanabe, a sophomore at the University of Richmond, feels calmer and more grounded with every visit to the river. (Photo by Gabi Williams)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

She also loves the river when she’s alone with her thoughts. As we walked, Sally pointed out details along the trail I might have missed\u2014a particularly interesting outcrop of rock, a tree bearing the mark of long-ago love: a heart and initials carved into bark.<\/p>\n

This is just what river lovers had in mind in 1972, when the James River Park System<\/a> was founded on parcels of land and islands purchased in the 1960s by two self-described “river rats”\u2014Jack Keith and Joe Schaefer\u2014and donated to the city of Richmond for this purpose.<\/p>\n

That spirit of citizen stewardship has sustained the park ever since, and today the James River is one of Richmond’s most distinctive natural resources, a haven for people like Sally Watanabe, seeking peace and quiet. Pony Pasture<\/a>, named for the horses that used to graze here, is one of the park’s most popular destinations.<\/p>\n

A sophomore at the University of Richmond, Sally comes to the James River about three times a week, either by herself or with other members of the university’s Outdoor Club. She always goes home calmer, soothed by exercise and the sounds of birdsong and rushing water.<\/p>\n

“It’s really the only time I can escape everything going on in Richmond,” she says. “Everything is temporary, and the river has made me realize that. I feel grounded when I come here.”<\/p>\n

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With spring in Richmond, flowering trees along the James River burst into full bloom. (Photo by Gabi Williams)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gabi Williams It was “golden” hour\u2014late on a spring day\u2014and every detail of the James River suddenly seemed radiant and magical in the light of late afternoon. I was walking the riverbank with a young woman named Sally Watanabe, who was telling me why this place, Pony Pasture Rapids, is one of her favorite Read more about Golden Hour at Pony Pasture<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3267,"featured_media":3070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[48679,1241,97646],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-pony-pasture","category-river-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/files\/2019\/04\/IMG_8112.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7o53H-Mr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}