Wintergreen

February 3, 2020

Sandy and I shoved off about ­­­7:00 AM for Wintergreen, the mountain-ski community in Nelson County, deep in the Blue Ridge. High time we got out of town, we thought, after frantic weeks of writing projects, home and car repairs, and our new hobby, throwing stuff out.

Part of the idea was to find a place for a family trip this summer. The kids agreed on a week in June. They vetoed a beach trip, so we thought—the mountains. We wanted to go anyway. We wanted to breathe the cool air of the Shenandoahs, to feel the silence, and the mystery.

For years we’ve headed toward the mountains on the way to southwest Virginia and Tennessee. It’s a pretty trip for most of the way, down U.S. 29 through rolling farmland and wine country. South of Culpeper you start seeing the long Shenandoah ridge to the west, reminding you you’ve left the northern Virginia suburbs, a happy sensation. Then you hit Charlottesville. The area, built around Monticello and the showcase University of Virginia campus, once was considered attractive. Now you face miles of highway construction and retail sprawl into the city still living with the failure of its police force  to control the “Unite the Right” riots of August 2017, made famous by President Trump.

So this time we chucked the usual route and circled around, I-95 to Fredericksburg, then west on U.S. 3 toward Orange. We passed history: Chancellorsville and The Wilderness, two of the most cataclysmic Civil War engagements, somber under gray skies, the artillery pieces green with age. But the route is serene, taking us south through Piedmont Virginia and its wide pastures and rural places. We drove west on I-64 for 20 miles, the Shenandoahs now looming around us, high rows of dark, jagged peaks showing a topping of snow.

From the interstate we turned onto U.S. 250 and 151, then headed up, winding into the mist as snow drifted silently, coating the forest. We arrived after four miles of nervous chugging up the sinuous route to the top with a line of impatient drivers behind us. The air was crisp with a bite to it as we hiked stiffly from the parking lot to the lodge. Skiers in their sleek coveralls were everywhere, clomping in their cleated boots, hauling their gear to the lifts, sipping coffee next to the slope, impervious to the cold. We shivered and hurried indoors to the Starbucks. After thawing out we wandered through the lodge’s chic boutiques, which offer the cutest ski togs. Not for us, now or probably ever.

The mountains always are spectacular, here they create the allure that justifies plopping a massive resort community in the middle of nowhere. The Wintergreen people have been careful to hide the gas station, supermarket, and other enterprises in stone and log buildings. Everything is quite pricey. Wintergreen, like lots of similar places on mountaintops or along picturesque beaches, attracts people because it’s out-of-the-way, expensive, discreet.

We’ve visited a couple of times, three years ago, when the running group rented a house for a weekend, then two summers ago, when Sandy and I got a townhouse for two nights. We hiked the Appalachian Trail, which runs right past the place, and sat outside gawking at the mountains, which in summer fade into that famous Blue Ridge haze. A crackling late-night thunderstorm made the magic more intense as lightening flickered around us, illuminating the peaks for a hundred miles. The forest trails around us were classic Appalachia, jagged white granite, fixed where it had formed eons ago.  We saw few others except in the restaurant. People go to Wintergreen to hike or hide, to find some kind of respite, to catch their breath from modern life.

We gulped some coffee and ventured outside to watch the skiers race down the slopes, covered mostly with fake snow. It was cold, but not New England- or Rocky Mountain-type cold. We heard folks chattering in various languages. Wintergreen has achieved a certain cachet with the ski set, I guess, at least for those who can’t get to Vail or Aspen or Killington. But they were having fun. All that moving around must keep them warm.

After watching for a while we got around to our chore, looking for a place for that June week. The rentals are scattered all over the mountain, some with spectacular, scary views of the valley, others secluded in the forest. We plotted several on a map and drove around trying to find them. It was mostly guesswork; street addresses generally aren’t released.

We’ve pulled off this family vacation plan three times, in different places, the last one was four years ago. Our older grandson then was two, the younger guy hadn’t been born. Their parents, our second daughter and son-in-law, have moved to South Carolina. Our son and daughter-in-law, near Philly, have moved on to bigger jobs. The youngest daughter lives in Colorado, the oldest was living in New Orleans. They all have busy, complicated lives. They’ve started taking their own vacations, building their own traditions.

The logistics get complicated, time slips away. Projects and chores crowd the days and weeks. Our street, the neighborhood, the everyday places, expand as if they were our entire world.

But the street we’re on has no wilderness silence, no deep forest trails, no silhouettes of ancient peaks stretching to the horizon.

By late afternoon the sky had darkened, we started for home. At some point along the twisting road down the mountain we pulled over and got out and stared at the sharp cliffs and deep valley below, barely visible through the snowy mist. In the chill we asked ourselves whether some elusive truth lay within the unearthly wonder around us. We wondered if the raw beauty of nature in its rugged, mystical, God-given form offers some transformative power, power to overcome indifference, pettiness, human frailty.

After a few minutes we felt the winter wind rising above us, the evergreens whispering and swaying. We got back in the car and left this southern mountaintop—a dark stopping place on a complicated journey.