(Part i of “Beyond Silence” can be viewed here: https://talbotspy.org/2026/08/04/beyond-silence-part-1-by-jamie-kirkpatrick/)
A Cooper’s Hawk soared high above the valley floor, climbing and dipping on a geothermal updraft. His species was extraordinarily proficient at navigating dense forest terrain and this particular terrain was nothing but forest. He sensed movement below, swooped down to investigate, and observed a small band of humans—a hunting party, maybe Cherokee, or Tuscarora, or Iroquois, moving silently on a barely discernible track through the forest. This valley had been a shared hunting ground for hundreds, maybe even thousands of seasons. The slopes and forests were full of game: bear, deer, squirrel, and wild turkey; the streams were full of fat trout. There was plenty of food for everyone.
The hawk rose again, climbing ever higher, soaring over the next ridge. Now. the bird could see that some of the old-growth forest had been cleared away. There were other men now, White men, who either came alone on horseback or in wagons with their families, Germans and Scots-Irish, hacking their way through the wilderness, leaving ruts in the land where once there had only been game trails. On the lower slopes of the valley, these new settlers were clearing fields, building small cabins, planting crops, hunting for meat. Thin wisps of smoke rose pencil-straight above the forest canopy, staining the sky.
The hawk soared on. In the distance, it could discern a dozen or more Black men in tattered clothing, sinews straining and glistening with sweat, toiling in a corn field. And just beyond, a long column of White men, all clad in grey, parched and dusty and carrying long rifles, shuffling along a dirt road behind a man on horseback. More fields in the bottomlands were being cleared for crops, and higher up on the steep slopes, there were more open pastures for cattle and sheep and horses. There was even a small town—a general store, a school, a church. A road had been cut through one of the mountain passes, writhing like a great snake as it climbed up one side of the mountain before descending into the next valley and the next and the one beyond that…
Time has a way of collapsing here at The Wilson House. I’m not sure how long I dozed—or if I had dozed at all—but when I opened my eyes, I watched another hawk “turning higher and higher in the widening gyre” and more lines from William Butler Yeats’ epic 1919 poem “The Second Coming” came rushing back, reminding me that even here, in this small, secluded corner of the world, “the center cannot hold; things fall apart; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
The rest of our sojourn looking over Blue Grass Valley was blissful. We made our peace with the beeves in the field beyond the fence, watched the clouds and the dappled sunlight come and go, broke out a new game called Rummikub which I struggled to understand, and ate and drank like kings and queens. On our last morning in Highland County, we hiked higher up the mountainside. I turned around when I could hear the blood pounding on my temples like drums. High enough.
We didn’t rush back home. We moseyed and meandered through the rugged countryside, stopping for a leisurely lunch along the way. We talked about The Wilson House: what details we remembered, what moments we enjoyed the most. The list was long, but to me, what I treasured above all was that space that goes beyond silence into utter stillness. Like that circling Cooper’s Hawk, I had watched it all unfold—the ghosts of those Native American hunters, the shades of the first white settlers who arrived in 1745, those enslaved men and the proud but doomed Confederate soldiers— spellbound in the silent and still grip of this blessed land and its long, tangled history.
I’ll be right back.
