At first it seems a rock, one of the hundreds of dark-gray knobs and ledges that split the water's flow as I approach a rapids just upstream from the new James River State Park. At lunchtime I reach Wingina, where a North Carolina couple, Kim and Phil, stand on the bank under a highway bridge, wearing bathing suits. They want to know whether it's safe to swim here. They ask as if they suspect it's a stupid question. Before them the James rolls fast and clear, its riffles shimmering in the midday sun.
Fish flip about, scales flashing.
Beyond the banks, sparsely populated meadowlands stretch for miles. But it stumps me. I tell Kim and Phil that a lot of people do swim in the river here, that Wingina is on a popular stretch of the James, and leave it at that. A few minutes later, Kim wades in, waist-deep. And in Howardsville, where the day's journey ends, I find a sandy beach beside the Virginia Fish and Game Commission boat ramp and a couple of dozen people sunbathing, fishing, playing.