Recent Articles from BRMC Newsletters

Trail Talk

We were unpacking at the Mountain House, our four-month-old baby nearly lost among all the boxes, and the place was a mess. The mice had died en masse in the crawl space and the second bedroom was unusable for the smell of them. The rooms were dark in the corners, but harshly lit from bare bulbs elsewhere. We didn't know whether we'd been right to come there. And then the dog went crazy because there was a man on a horse outside the window.

I went out to see. He asked if we were the new caretakers, and I said that we were. He looked at me as if assessing whether this could be true.

"Don't get run off," he said, and rode the horse away.

I have never seen him or the horse he rode in on again, nor have I decided in these four and a half years what to make of what he said. At the time, it was downright chilling. Since, I have decided his message was important, but still cannot say in what way. Maybe it was meant as encouragement or instruction. Maybe it was important to this man that someone, anyone, stay in the Mountain House. People will take bad advantage of the natural area, but some do even with us there. Most do not, even without us there. The residence is cleaner now and better lit, and between us and the black snakes, there aren't so many mice. There is a sign at the trail head now, a couple new trails. The first summer we were here, high school kids used to park and camp overnight; now they don't, but we think some of them have come back to hike during the day. In the beginning, we sometimes saw four-wheeler tracks on the trails. We've talked to some of the riders, and now, we sometimes see four-wheeler tracks on the trails.

You win some and lose some, but we did not get run off. And it is important that someone watch this land, and love it. But why us? I work at a software company (and write and edit on the side) and only found out about the place when we were looking for a place and a co-worker suggested I check into what was then Friends of Bull Run, where he was a neighbor and member. Ric called Harry Leach right away to ask about it, but the caretaker at the time wasn't leaving; even so, I wrote a letter describing the many times I'd passed the Beverley Mill driving between my home in Harrisonburg and Michael Ann's home in Reston, loved it, and would love to live by it. (Coincidence: The mill had burned the week we were on our honeymoon, in October 1998. Another one: Michael Kieffer, who became the executive director after we became the caretakers, and his wife Jodi were married on the same day as we were.) Long story short, we eventually got to be the caretakers, despite my limited knowledge of trees and plants (Michael Ann had much more, though) and lack of experience in such a job. We think the baby on her lap during our interview was the deciding factor; thus, we kept having more, thinking it was a requirement of the job.

While it was a greatly important gift for us to be able to live here, it was and is more important that someone live here. I drive to work every day from the end of Beverley Mill Drive, a wonderful tree-lined strip beside the interstate but no part of it, to an office park in Fairfax that also has lots of trees around it-admirably many trees in Fairfax, in fact-and I know that these places are not the same. We have watched the advanced development (the kind where they leave as many trees as possible when putting up lots of modern housing) and the not-so-advanced development (where they whack most of the trees) well, advancing, and steadily advancing, with attendant traffic. The office parks and "townhome" parks with names pertaining to meadows or equestrianism are a dime a dozen; an 800-acre natural area with miles of trails and wondrous streams only becomes more the exception with more suburban expansion. Someone has to watch this place.

And we're glad it was us, all of us. Eli, the four-month-old, is now almost five. His sister Augusta is three, their brother Atticus, nine months. We did not get run off; we have outgrown this place in terms of the size of our family, but it would take many more years than we have to outgrow what the natural area has to offer, so long as it remains.

We are moving to Weyers Cave, Va., just south of my hometown. I will keep the same job, working at home three days of the week and making one round trip-past the mill, again-for the other two.

We will miss more than the natural area. Michael and Jodi have become our friends and our children's friends; they are generous and kind, and we even believe Michael when he tells us he will miss the noise the kids make downstairs. All of us will miss our friend Tanya, and I suspect that even in our new house, Eli and Gussie will sometimes wonder whether Tanya is upstairs and can they go visit her. We will also miss the board members, volunteers, and hikers; I'm sorry I can't list them all, but we are very grateful to them.

I have not yet figured out when my last hike as caretaker will be, but it will be a sad one. I'm sure that we will come again, but that those visits will be touched by a feeling of paradise lost. And the grand walks, the most lovely cemeteries (we should all be so lucky, in the end), the cool creeks, that spot where a spring comes into Catletts Branch at the base of Ridge Loop Trail, any part of Fern Hollow, the closing scar of the quarry-these will all come back to us from time to time as well, remembered, I'm sure they will be, with the same feeling of having left much behind. It's going to practically kill me to take down the signs above the door that say, "Welcome home, Augusta," and "Welcome home, Atticus," for we were all home here. We did not get run off-and more, we are thankful that we had the chance to be here. Now it seems staying was no struggle at all; it's leaving that's hard.