I have always had a strong sense of place.
My roots are Surry County, Virginia. My grandfather lived there, in an old, pre-Civil war farm house where he lived most of his life. It was called Shady Grove and began my sense that houses had personalities like people. My grandfather began living there as a sharecropper and at the time, the house was bereft of paint, and the yard and farm largely abandoned and wild. In time, long before I was born, he had worked hard enough that he could buy the house, forests and surrounding farmland. He earned a good living on the farm, wrestled the yard into a thing of beauty with huge spreading oaks and bright fushia crepe myrtles, and painted and repaired the house into a warm, inviting place to live.
I spent part of my summers there, getting up early in the morning, feeding the hogs with my grandfather, working in the garden and sometimes hoeing peanuts in the summer sun. I spent many late afternoons and summer evenings drifting in a swamp boat on the mill pond deep in the woods behind his pre-civil war farmhouse, not caring if I caught fish, just savoring the peace of the place. That farm, particularly the mill pond, came to represent home to me, and still sings of home and peace to me like no other spot on the earth. I found an acceptance and peace there that is buried in my DNA somehow.
I mostly grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Somehow, Richmond left less of an impression on me than my grandfather's farm, but some of it, particularly the tumble of rocks on the James River where the fall line breaks up the perfect smoothness of the broad river, or the broad expanse of Monument Avenue with it's majestic statues, still sings to me. As a teenager, the river was a long, long bike ride from my house. Today, my sister lives on a bluff very near the James, and when I visit her, one of my favorite things to do is to walk down to the riverside and sit on a rock listening to the rushing water and feeling it on my feet as they dangle from one of the flat gray boulders. It brings back the best of my teenager years.
Southwest Virginia has been my home for the past thirty one years. In that time I have come to love the place: the mountains with their valleys, trails and streams, the small towns with their old churches, antique shops, and sense of history; and most of all, I have grown to appreciate the warmhearted people I find everywhere here. It has become home for me.
What do all these places have in common? They are in Virginia. Virginia is my home. I define myself as a Virginian, and while aware of the flaws (we southerners are not all
that, all the time, alas.), I love my state's heritage, history, beauty and people.
Yet, at nearly 54 years of age, having lived all my life in Virginia, I have decided to move to Vermont.
Love takes me there, but beyond love of a woman, I have also fallen in love with Vermont itself over the past year or so. Much of southern Vermont, where I will be closing to buy a house this very day, reminds me of Southwest Virginia - lush green mountains, small towns and a palpable sense of place and community. But there is something else here, that I cannot yet define that sings to me in Vermont. I find a peace and pleasure in the countryside and small towns that I have not found since the mill pond on my grandfather's farm.
Moving to Vermont is not like moving to Bavaria or Timbuktu, but there are a lot of differences, and a lot of changes ahead. Many of those differences are part of what drew me to Vermont, and many I have yet to discover, for the discovery comes only with a sustained time in a place.
To celebrate my move, I am moving my blog, and changing my blog name, to " Quarry House", named after the small 1800's house I am moving into, It that sits on the edge of an abandoned slate quarry in West Pawlet, Vermont. (Summit Manor was named after a house I used to own, as well. It's that sense of place thing at work, I suspect.) I will continue to share the poetry and photographs that you regular readers have come to expect here, but I will add to it notes on my journey of discovery, of the differences I find between my life in Virginia and my new life in Vermont.
I hope you will visit my new home at Quarry House, and as you have here, continue to find something of value to your spirit there.
Tom
PS - The photograph is of a barn not far from my new home in West Pawlet, Vermont. You can click on it for a larger version.
