Virginia is for Lovers
The Appalachian Mountains…ran like shivers up my spine…they rose in my dreams…
Was I always destined for Virginia? How did I go from a small coastal town in the South Shore of Boston to living a rural life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia? Was the fact that I grew up infatuated with Annie Oakley, Daniel Boone, and Davy Crockett a sign of what my future held?
When I was 20 my sister, Sherry, came back from a vacation to Virginia Beach with a button that read “Virginia is for Lovers.” I was smitten. After convincing her to let me have the button, I pinned it to my pocketbook where it remained my motto for the next couple of years. Another sign?
My first husband and his family are electricians. When construction in the South Shore of Boston during the late 1970s dried up, Texas and Virginia were the two states they were considering for relocation. The Texas Oil Boom won out, and I ended up living near Houston for 7 years, which was where my two sons were born and how my brother Danny came to live in Houston.
While I have good memories of my years living in Texas, we never meant to live there as long as we did. I missed my family and the seasonal changes. It was hot and flat. As my interests in home-schooling and homesteading grew so did my urge to move to the country. While exploring a map one day, I glanced upon the word “Shenandoah,” a valley that runs alongside the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountain Range. I had a visceral and emotional reaction to the word. A shiver went up my spine. Soon after, and although I had never even seen mountains before, I had a vivid dream of the soft rolling green-blue mountains that I would later come to know as The Blue Ridge.
Other factors converged and eventually led me to Floyd where I found other home-schoolers, lots of tofu eaters, quartz, clean water, and country charm. Considering that most of my ancestors came from Ireland, when I learned that the Appalachian Mountains were once the same land mass as Ireland and Scotland before the ice age, I better understood my draw to the mountains.
My home-place roots in Massachusetts run deep. I visit my family and the ocean every year. But as much as I love where I grew up, I also can’t ignore that I was guided to live where I do. I think of the button that my sister brought back from Virginia Beach 30 years ago as an open-ended ticket that began the journey to the rest of my life.
Photo: Sherry and her husband, Nelson, visit me in Virginia. The photo was taken up at The Saddle Overlook on The Blue Ridge Parkway, in Floyd.
February 8th, 2006 9:08 am
Shenandoah. I love this word, too. It makes me feel like it is an easier place to live. More calm. That is my impression.
I have never been to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Didn’t the Waltons live in Virgina? I wanted to live on Walton’s mountain, when I was a kid. Isn’t that funny? I didn’t want New York or Hollywood, I wanted to go rural in the mountains.
February 8th, 2006 9:21 am
Yes, I just looked it up to refresh my memory. Although “Walton Mountain” was fictional, The Waltons show was set in The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and based on the area near Charlottsville. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton%27s_Mountain I was mostly a teenager when the show aired and it didn’t effect me like some of my earlier rural life representations.
February 8th, 2006 9:39 am
I’m from WV originally, and boy, do I know what you mean. Some of us are just born of the country, mountain landscape. Literally or viscerally, it doesn’t really matter. If it’s in you, it just is, and there’s little to do about it.
Besides being immensely grateful, of course.
February 8th, 2006 11:26 am
My problem, Jennifer, is that I have the ocean in my blood as well as the mountains. The ocean part is stronger but what comes with the mountains that even beats out the ocean is SPACE. I love that I can’t see my closest neighbor’s house. I don’t think I can get that anywhere near an ocean. I also think sometimes your led away from home as part of your destiny for growth. That can be a mixed blessing.
February 8th, 2006 1:39 pm
I too love the water, and live by Lake Ontario. Great post.
February 8th, 2006 1:49 pm
Isn’t fascinating how you can feel a “pull” towards a polace and know that you have this affinity to it and need to be near it or right in the middle of it? Amazing.
By the way Colleen, I looked up the cost of a piece of Salmon that I bought..1/2 at the most, though I think it was less….$15.98!
February 8th, 2006 1:55 pm
Oh, that’s cool. I never knew that Irelanad lined up there exactly. Isn’t that interesting how the landscape resonated as though the genes have an imprint of ancestral home embedded. I have a thing for hill country.
It’s lovely to be in a culture that backs and supports your own ideas. You are born into a family but then as you grow, you grow into another. Yours was Floyd. Mine is out there to be uncovered. Personally I’m hoping for a more moderate southern clime.
February 8th, 2006 2:15 pm
It sounds and looks so lovely there. It makes my own heart yearn. Good for you.. for following your dreams.
February 8th, 2006 3:43 pm
I meant to say one piece that was less than 1/2 POUND!!! (lol)
Does that sound rather expensive??? Sorry, my dear.
February 8th, 2006 4:49 pm
Colleen, like Jennifer, I am from WV. I told someone else on a blog today that I love with mountains with my soul, and it is true. Whenever I drive back home, and start to see the mountains in SE VA, I cry. I cannot help it. They are a part of me. Yet, I love the ocean too.
February 8th, 2006 6:13 pm
I wish I was there right now!!!
February 8th, 2006 9:59 pm
I’m back on line after having been without internet access for 6 days (UGH).
Chiming in (and it feels good!) to mention how funny it is that Virginia has had such a pull on our family. First Colleen, and then my daughter Chrissie, who lived there for 10 years – thanks to Col. And I’m pretty sure some of our cousins live there as well.
I’ve always heard that the oceans and the mountains, give off a special energy. Must be why it gets in our blood.
February 8th, 2006 10:27 pm
Wonderful post–“shivers up my spine” WOW! I know the call of a place. I remember one winter hiking in the Shenandoah National Park–and camping on a ridgeline, with the trees bare of leaves, watching the cars in a sleepy town down below. I also love the music, “O Shenandoah.” Keith Jarrett has a wonderful piano recording of “O Shenandoah” in Melody at Night, with You
February 9th, 2006 12:03 am
Virginia has everything you’d need; beaches, mountains, dogwood in spring, maple in fall, history abounds, natures marvels such as Natural Bridge and Dixie Caverns and wetland preserves. Roanoke is my mom’s home town and my brother was born there. We lived there for almost 7 years. My parents have lived here in Virginia Beach for 25 years now and I’m working on year 2. I hope we never have to leave.
February 9th, 2006 1:44 am
I will have to visit there one day you make it sound so wonderful!
February 9th, 2006 2:31 pm
That picture is adorable!
Hi Sherry!!!