Walking where they walked

When I stand in the sand dunes at Kill Devil Hills and feel the wind, I can almost fly, transported back to the moment when Orville and Wilbur Wright first defied gravity. Scarcely a hundred years ago in the outer banks of North Carolina, these determined brothers made history.

I get chillbumps when I stand where people from the history books walked.  In Williamsburg, I  feel the fire of Patrick Henry.   I stroll the campus of William and Mary where Jefferson attended college, sit in the church pew where George Washington attended the June 1st Day of Prayer.

In Jamestown I stand where Pocahantas saved John Smith from starving in 1608.  She was only 13 at the time.  At 19 she married a colonist and forged peace between the settlers and her father's tribe. What a legacy for one young girl.

Two rivers north, on the Rappahannock River,  my mother's ancestor, a tailor named Daniel Winstead,  born 1647 in Sussex Parrish, England,  came to the new world for a 50 acre land grant in Lancaster County, Virginia.  He was an adventurer, off to a new world, from tailor to tobacco farmer, but he did not live his dream for very long.  He died in 1671, survived only by one young son, Samuel, the first generation of my mother's family born in America.

And today, I am standing where he stood.  History gives me the shivers.