By Matt de Simone
The James River will soon be active once again this summer. Families and friends will once again “float the river” in their tubes, kayaks, and canoes.
A local filmmaker is about to embark on her journey on the James River. Botetourt native Jess Wiegandt prepares to complete her thesis film project (“Quality of Life: A James River Story”). Wiegandt will canoe the James River from Buchanan to the Chesapeake Bay. The project will cover 348 miles in total. “Quality of Life” combines her love for journalism and outdoor instruction.
“My hope for ‘Quality of Life’ is that it will be a documentary that can be useful for school programs and for the general public learning about the watershed where a lot of people live in the state of Virginia,” Wiegandt explained. “This story is going to follow my team of four women who are going to paddle from the headwaters of the James to the Chesapeake Bay.”
The project is a documentary film project about her trip down the river. At the same time, she learns about the watershed and the stakeholders along the way. Wiegandt is interested in discovering the effects locals see from pollution and conservation efforts. She plans to take water samples for a biology class from Henrico High School in Richmond to monitor anything out of the ordinary while Wiegandt and her team travel the James River.
“We’re going to be working with that high school group which is pretty cool because that’s getting youth involved in their watershed and getting them engaged about different things that could affect the quality of water in their home river,” Wiegandt said.
Both of Wiegandt’s parents are certified instructors for the American Canoe Association (ASA). They got Jess and her sister into the outdoors at a young age.
“From a really young age, I was exposed to the water,” Wiegandt explained. “We started in canoes and soon switched to kayaks. Our parents would take us on weekends to the course they taught on the river. They would bring us along, put us in our kayaks, and we would paddle along with the students they instructed on the James River.”
Wiegandt developed an interest in Creative Writing while attending Read Mountain Middle School. A teacher suggested submitting content to “The Edge,” a weekly page in The Roanoke Times dedicated to stories written by teenage journalists in the Roanoke Valley. She spent her time as a student at Lord Botetourt learning from The Times’ newspaper staff about journalism, photography, and telling stories through the photos.
She attended Bravard College in North Carolina, where she received degrees in English and Wilderness Leadership and Experimental Education. Wiegandt took what she learned at Bravard and currently applies it toward her degree in the Environmental Filmmaking program at American University in Washington, D.C.
“People who are working within the arts industry rely on getting together with people for showcasing things or being able to film in-person,” Wiegandt said. “I definitely experienced a little bit of slow-down in what I could do in my projects for the first half of the pandemic. I started to make connections with some organizations where I could edit remotely, and I am currently working with a conservation project in Kenya as their editor.
