What Can Rivers Teach Us?

Riverlore, the theme for the Virginia Folklife Area at this year’s Richmond Folk Festival, is a word mash-up that invites us to imagine all the complex ways rivers and people come together.

Organizing Riverlore demonstrations, displays, and conversations with our partner, the James River Association, was joyful work. It underscored the ways our rivers connect us, no matter who or where we are.

The mighty James River flows through the festival site and served as my inspiration along with the Rivanna, my local river. No matter what might be happening in the human world, the river offers a constant source of beauty and spiritual nourishment. (I am also a longtime admirer of Pete and Toshi Seeger, whose Clearwater sloop and long-running music and environment festival, contributed to the restoration of the Hudson River that was declared “biologically dead” in the 1960s.)

Virginia has nine major river systems that connect the mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, our common watershed for everything east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We have two Bay watermen coming from Tangier and Chincoteague islands (James Eskridge and Arthur Leonard), to share stories of crabbing, making decoys, and hosting ecotourism in their communities.

We also have artists traveling from as far west as Boone, North Carolina, to share “Ancient New,” multimedia project about the New River (Tom Hansell, Trevor McKenzie, Julie Shepherd-Powell). This river is older than the Appalachian Mountains, and as Riverlore performer Malcolm Smith writes in “Fiddlin’ with the Flow,” it brought “the sounds of fiddle and banjo music down from the peaks, out from the hollers, and into the lives and homes of Virginia’s mountaineers.”

“A river is a rare thing all by itself, a conveyor of water and history and myth.”

Bill Belleville, River of Lakes: A Journey on Florida’s St. Johns River

I am now filled with river facts and stories I’ve heard along the way. The most exciting? Joining co-curator Justin Black on a trip down the fall line of the James River, through downtown Richmond, with RVA Paddlesports. As we floated and bounced along, he regaled us with stories of landmarks, bald eagles, and cormorants, rattling off the names of rapids and rocks.

A filmmaker with Headwaters Down, Justin is organizing a Riverlore exhibit of historic watercraft of the James, from a dugout canoe to the most modern and aggressive whitewater kayaks. Festival visitors can also check out a batteau in the canal by Brown’s Island, courtesy of the James River Batteau Tours of Scottsville.  

(Headwaters Down is screening their latest work — ALL FORWARD!, a documentary about urban white water raft guide training — as part of our Thursday night folk festival “launch party.”)

Riverlore is local knowledge of how to navigate rapids and where to find the best swimming holes or fishing spots. How many of us share early memories of a loved one teaching us how to fish?

It’s also an origin story. Rivers have shaped the very course of Virginia history. Thousands of years ago, indigenous Mattaponi and Pamunkey potters turned mud and shells into beautiful sturdy vessels; today, they create new takes on old traditions near rivers named for their people.  

Autumn Morningstar Custalow Alfaro was awarded a 2025 Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship to work with her grandmother, Christine Rippling Water Custalow, in making traditional black ware pottery. In September, the pair received a new kiln for Christine’s home studio on the Mattaponi Reservation that will revive her practice and teaching.

Also joining Riverlore is Allyson Gray, a member of the Pamunkey tribe, a contemporary potter, and a former student of Christine’s. Autumn’s late cousin, Mildred Moore, received one of the first Virginia Folklife Apprenticeships in 2004 to apprentice Bonnie Sears in black ware pottery.

No matter what, we have our water in common. Over 3 million Virginians share the James River watershed alone. How we each choose to enjoy or ignore, abuse or cherish our waterways will impact our future. Panel discussions on environmental stewardship organized by the James River Association will highlight recent success stories in building a healthy river, by all.

Native plants are essential to a healthy watershed. Riverlore is naming the plants and animals and knowing what they’re good for. Festival favorite Clyde Jenkins returns with baskets and apples from the Shenandoah Valley. Seed Pocket Nursery, a new venture by friends Will Wickham and Bethany Allen, will be teaching festival visitors about edible and medicinal native plants. They told me where to find native wild rice, zizania aquatica, in the Appomattox River south of Richmond.

There are so many layers of significance to the rivers around us. For 200 million years, the Atlantic Sturgeon has swum inland from the ocean to spawn. Maybe turning our attention towards rivers — so ancient and elemental — we can reorient and find more connection with our neighbors, and the natural world.

I invite you to explore our displays, demonstrations, and story stage at this year’s folk festival. Check out our schedule and participating artists, there are too many to mention here.

Next to Riverlore, the Center for Cultural Vibrancy is hosting amazing bands from Richmond and beyond in the Allianz Amphitheater, including bluegrass legends, the Lonesome River Band, and an extra-special local musician jam set for RVA native, Justin Golden. (See the CCV Stage schedule.)

See you at the festival! You might be inspired to more closely notice your local river or to make some riverlore of your own.