How We Began

When we bought the land in Ashe County we needed to find the people who would be our friends and neighbors.

There were five homes on Young Road in what they call Young Hollow. Kenneth and Mary are at the end of that road and Granny Young nearby. Some of the homes belong to Walters who are related to both the Young family and the Waddell family (who we bought from.) Pauline Walters was our closest neighbor and her sons, Johnny, Eddie and Larry, and a daughter JoAnn (Phillips) were nearby. All were eager to help us settle in and learn about the fauna and flora and would help with anything we asked.

The natural surroundings had such appeal even in winter. I couldn't wait to see what the dried flowers would be in summer. The first tree to bloom in March was a Serviceberry along with hordes of narcissus that someone had planted behind the old spring house.

The lack of light pollution provided the gift of  stars, constellations, and galaxies. The wind raged as if to do its own spring-cleaning. Rains were followed by wisps of clouds rising from the valleys like misty spirits. Deer were dark in winter, and the squirrels came back and back to their stored hickory nuts and busied themselves with making nests signaling that winter would eventually wear itself out.

Initially, we thought we would develop things slowly. I hoped to renovate buildings already here that could be turned into a suitable place for writing. We started cleaning out the old granary and he 1940's farmhouse which would have to be torn down. It had been damaged by animals and weather after a large tree fell on one side, opening it to the elements.

Traylor wanted to start building right away so we would have a house to sleep in when we were here, but the first thing we needed was a farm road to provide access to all aspects of the land. There was the low land with the grassy stream and a tobacco field, the open bowl, several wooded acres and a wide highland hayfield. Getting from one area to another took too long on foot for walking to be efficient, so Traylor bought a truck.

We met with land movers and decided to cut into the slope of the hill nearest Young Road to keep from building the road through the old tobacco field which we reserved for crops like the pumpkins that would grow there in years to come. We wanted to follow the old farm road and cow paths and then curve around the rim of the bowl to the highland hay field for access.

We first decided that the house site would be on a flat spot in the wooded area overlooking Young and Sussex, behind a few trees so it would be private and unseen from the road. This would change radically before we started building, but we added a dog tail of  gravel road down to that site between stands of mountain laurel and rhododendron. And, Traylor had an idea for a water-feature. He wanted to turn the lowest, boggy vale into a pond.

We entrusted the pond and the road to the only man we found who had created a pond from scratch before.  He was so excited about working on a tractor without a shirt that we should have worried more about his concern for the land. He was like a boy playing in the dirt and like an adolescent, spent an unnatural amount of time looking at himself in the side mirror of his truck preening his growing beard. What became clear was that he loved playing with our dirt and getting paid. We felt that we were responsible for taking care of the land and sharing it with others as stewards, but we were not there while he did the initial grading, and when I saw the first scathing cut, I cried. There was no going back.

And, we learned not to rush the local workers. Mountain time is a real phenomenon and a pushy "flatlander" is never appreciated by the locals. In March, folks are just starting to come out, women still quilting near the fireplace and men anticipating the next snow. March was hardest to take. It just seemed like winter would never end. Here a bloom, there a bloom, some gradual greening, but we were told not to plant because there would be another frost, maybe even a hard freeze. Just wait, they said, so we waited. The last week of March is...the...longest, still waiting for spring. Come on, April, you tease!