Before Bluebird Cove 4: What About Virginia?

Although we'd spent years saying, "One day we'll move to Tennessee," we never had a specific place in mind, so when we decided it was time to move from Alabama, we got out the maps to decide what areas of Tennessee would be options. Before we ever began making notes, Randal said, "What about Virginia?"

Looking back, I know think what an odd question that was. We call it Providence, but it was so out of character for Randal to wonder off the trodden path of routine thinking. My mind instantly went wild. I loved Virginia! I had been through Virginia many times when I lived in the South as a single girl, going back to Pennsylvania for visits. It was a beautiful drive through the mountain area and being a "city girl" when I was single, the I-95 route was exciting to me.

I was raised by my grandparents and knew them as "Mom" and "Daddy." He had been born in Virginia and I remembered him singing a line or two about "my old Viriginia" and "black-eyed susans" and those old-time gospel song clips now held my mind in fascination of what Virginia might hold for us. We had traveled through Virginia on travel trips and home-school history trips, so Randal knew he liked the area. We would always stop by the Capitol grounds in Richmond where the squirrels and pigeons will sit on your legs to eat. I always thought that was a little scene of how Heaven will be with the addition of lions and lambs, giraffes and elephants, etc.

Randal had been talking to somebody from the Charlottesville area only a couple weeks before, so we took our long list of what we desired to find in the area of where we wanted to be and went online to see what part of Virginia we might like to call our own. How quickly we transitioned from Tennessee to Virginia. It was definitely destiny.

We wanted an area that knew what vegetarian meant. We have been vegetarians since 1978 and in Alabama if we mentioned that, we were generally asked how we could just eat vegetables. Finding a place to eat out was a challenge, but fortunately we rarely eat out. However, it would be nice to have a multitude of choices if we did, and the Charlottesville area offered that.

We wanted lots of forests and areas of running water and organic choices and a community that didn't have the "big box" stores dominating the shopping choices. We dreamed of environmental and conservation organizations so we could volunteer and participate in activities, but most of all a climate that would allow me to be outdoors more with less heat, but no long snowy winters.

What resources the internet held for us to find out about air, water and land pollution qualities! There are forums for every topic under the sun for the day-to-day living experiences of people in an area. The online community can be so helpful when you have specific questions about something and it proved to be so for us, because we had many details we wanted to be certain of before making a trip to look at homes.

We had decided we wanted to find land and build so we could have a bigger and better "refuge" and more habitat for the wild things of the world, so our plan was to buy a home, move, find land, build and then begin to live our dream life.

Providence had other plans .....