Little Mountain

By Chase J. Merrill

Now it's my turn.  For the last of the blog posts about our trip, we'll be heading several hundred miles north and about a week back in time, to Washington, DC.  Actually, this post won't be about DC itself; here I will be writing about a little mountain in Albemarle county, Virginia.

Monticello was the home of Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, the Founder of the University of Virginia, and one of our family's favorite Founding Fathers.  Monticello means "little mountain" in Italian, and it is located on top of a hill (not really a mountain by our standard, but Thomas Jefferson only had the perspective of a Virginian as far as mountains go), in Charlottesville, Virginia, and we stopped there on our way from DC to Williamsburg.  It was a little out of the way, but Dad had been there before and really liked it and wanted us to be there and see it.

While we're on the subject of seeing it -- ecce, the camera roll!

A panoramic view of Monticello.  The walkways from the main building to the little side buildings have a system that would collect rainwater and take it to a cistern below the house.  Also, this front yard is enormous.

A panoramic view of Monticello's gardens.  Jefferson bred and grew all kinds of vegetables here, especially tomatoes, although a man who worked at Yorktown told us he didn't like to eat them.  He probably used them in marinara sauce etc., because we know that he did like European cuisine.

Another photo of the gardens.  This looks like a vineyard, which I know is super helpful, as anyone reading this can probably figure that out as easily as I can.  (I actually don't remember this picture.)  In any case, speaking of European cuisine, there are at least two recipes that Jefferson brought back from Europe when he served as ambassador to France that most of us take for granted now: macaroni and cheese and vanilla ice cream!  The latter was a closely guarded secret in Milan that he had to smuggle back to America.

Mater at the gardens.  As you can see in this picture, Monticello is sort of on a mountain.

At the gardens.  At one garden on this trip we saw parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme all growing together.  I don't think it was this one, but there may have been most of them here.

Trey at a little pool at the front of Monticello.  He would keep fish they caught here until they were ready to be eaten.  I think there were a few in in the pool when we were there, but I seriously doubt they were caught in the eighteenth century.

Pater and his offspring in front of Monticello.  Thanks for bringing us here, Dad!

Mom had me take this picture because Dad supposedly had a picture of himself with another girl in this same spot (before he met Mom, obviously).  It's a cool angle of the house.

I just thought this was a cool picture.

It started raining while we were in the basement of Monticello.  And we are crazy, so we decided to walk back to the car rather than take the shuttle.  Ergo, we were soaked all the way to Williamsburg.

In front of Jefferson's gravestone.  Again, soaked.

"Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia."  (The three things I listed earlier.)

Jefferson was 6'2".  I am almost 6'2".  And apparently this one attracts lightning, so the Monticello people were quite keen to get us away from him and inside.

Family selfie in front of Monticello

Monticello was my favorite part of the trip.  Several people have asked me why -- after all, Monticello certainly wasn't the most exciting part of the trip, or the biggest or most impressive building we saw -- and the best explanation I've been able to give is that you have to be there, to feel Monticello, to know why I liked it.  I tried to describe the feeling of Monticello in a poem I wrote for my Creative Writing class this summer (I got an A), which I have included here.

Little Mountain

by Chase J. Merrill

Much has changed in our nation’s capital

in the two centuries I’ve been gone.

I stand amid the roar

of cars and busses and crowds.

I find, across the Mall from the Capitol,

a corner more quiet but hardly

secluded. Here is a monumental

domed shrine, overlooking a vast reflecting pool

whose source is the Potomac. Inside this shrine

is my likeness,

twenty feet tall at least. My face stares

down at me, hard as bronze. My words,

. . . among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . .

are carved into the marble

walls surrounding my statue, in Latin capitals,

like the inscriptions in the temples and palaces

of ancient Rome,

while my true voice echoes,

unintelligible.

Here sits mortal man’s attempt to make me immortal.

Why have you built me this temple?

I am no god.

All men are created equal,

and are endowed by their Creator . . .

My best words, or among them at least, and worth

remembering, but not in a memorial of marble, for

I built my own monument.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, surrounded not

with cacophonous cars and crowds but guarded

with a silent, vast army of trees,

Monticello stands on a little mountain.

A red brick home, meticulously

planned, it is my “essay

in architecture.” Its skirts are garnished

with gardens of flowers and fruit. It is adorned

with a white Italian dome, smaller

by far than the dome of that temple.

Inside is a room fat with books,

a study, and rooms for teaching my children

and grandchildren. The center of my monument

is not my statue,

but my soul.

My monument does not echo,

it does not awe,

but it is a science, a school, a sanctuary,

and that, I hope,

is how you remember me.