For some reason I thought Virginia’s First Landing State Park evoked a _The Pirates of the Caribbean_ vibe. With its dense canopy of bald Cyprus trees emerging from the swamps, the forest’s beauty was accompanied with the sounds of frogs, birds, and cicadas.
First Landing, like so many other spots of preserved forest in this country, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The area has layers of historical importance: besides being near the spot where the Virginia Company settlers landed in 1607, merchants and pirates used it as a source of freshwater during the War of 1812, and later in the Civil War both sides patrolled the waterways.
Today visitors can traverse along the park’s nineteen miles of easygoing trails and imagine the happenings of pirates in the age of Blackbeard (who might have used this area as a hiding spot at one point).
