I’d been hearing about Wilson House for more than a decade now. How peaceful it was; how bucolic; how “unplugged.” Last weekend, I decided it was time to see it for myself…
My wife’s sister and her husband “discovered” Wilson House twenty-six years ago. They and another family had joined forces to purchase a sixty-three acre woodlot in Western Virginia, but in an admirable display of common sense, they decided it would be wise to spend some time in the area before building a home there. They looked around and not far from the little town of Monterey, they found a rental property on 80 acres with an old farmhouse overlooking the Blue Grass Valley in Highland County. They rented it for a week. The next year, they returned and rented it for two weeks. The following year, they rented Wilson House for the entire month of August and that’s the way it has been for the last twenty-four years. They summered their kids there and they loved the place, too. That original woodlot they purchased was responsibly logged and sold. Their rental property, Wilson House, was—still is—the right place for them.
Only 2,300 people live in Highland County Virginia; there are more beeves than people. In fact, Highland County is the least populated county in Virginia and perhaps of any county in any state east of the Mississippi. At an elevation of just over 3,000 feet, it nestles in the embrace of two high ridges and is accessible only by traversing three precipitous mountain passes off the western side of the Shenandoah Valley. It’s hard to get there, but once you do, the juice is more than worth the squeeze.
As it did most everywhere in Virginia, the Civil War found its sorry way into Highland County. The winter of 1861 was exceptionally harsh and both Union and Confederate troops had to endure brutal conditions in the higher elevations. In the spring of 1862, Stonewall Jackson earned his first victory in the Valley Campaign at the Battle of McDowell fought on Sitlington’s Hill, not far from where Wilson House now stands. However, not everyone here welcomed the war. In fact, one of the original owners of the acreage on which Wilson House now stands—a farmer named Adam Gum—sat out the war hidden from the Home Guard in a small rock house he built farther up the mountain from Wilson House’s present location. Local women brought him food.
The current house is a little more than a century old. Its floors are cattywampus, its ceilings are dangerously low. The house was originally a summer camp used only in haying season, but in 1923, it became the permanent residence of the Wilson family. Four generations later, it still is, although the current owner, Mary Wilson Lovelady, now lives in, of all places, Las Vegas. She returns home every summer for two weeks to check on the house and commune with her family’s history.
On our first afternoon at Wilson House, we traveled into town to do some shopping at Monterey’s weekly Farmers Market. There were stacks of organic produce; carrots, onions, rainbow chard, ripe red tomatoes; Cornbread laced with maple syrup. I watched Mennonite kids buy homemade lollipops for a dollar a piece. Amish men and women came and went by horse and buggy, clip-clopping briskly along a two-lane country road. Time suspended all judgement. Everyone smiled and said hello. There were no strangers there.
These remote hills and valleys roll easily on the eye. Fluffy white clouds drift up and over the ridge across the valley. Timbered slopes, pastures, and grassy meadows stretch away north and south. The front lawn of Wilson House faces due west, so on our first evening, we watched the sun sink down into West Virginia. The farms and fields and hills across the way painted a serene landscape. There is more here than just silence; there is utter stillness.
Just before supper, we shared a glass of wine with a herd of Black Angus cattle that came strolling by just beyond the fence line. Once they ambled on, we retreated inside to eat, then hurried back out to watch the last of the daylight drain from the western sky as the sun settled down for the night beyond the opposite ridge. The first stars watched us watching them. Peace descended like gentle rain.
The next morning, the in-laws headed off to ride in the annual Mountain Mama Road Bike Challenge. I stayed home, nursing a second cup of coffee, watching the clouds and the cattle. I had a lot to contemplate. The morning sun was warm, somewhere a bee buzzed. There was just a hint of breeze. I closed my eyes…
To be continued…