The Hermitage Project Moves Forward

Once the fund raising efforts were moving forward in a positive way and we had pledges committed which would complete the project we began conversations with the local building inspectors, contractors, excavators and others.

We had initially identified a 13 acre parcel of property off Dutch Creek Road which had been saved out of the conservation easements placed on the adjacent conference center land. This piece of land was beautiful and very pristine and consisted of deeply sloped land full of large oaks and rhododendrons.

Photo is of vestry of St. Paul's Wilkesboro visiting the first site during their anual vestry retreat.

Due to restrictions and requirements of the Planning and Inspection Department of Watauga County the road and infrastructure requirements would have environmentally hurt this beautiful pristine forest and negated the peace and tranquility we were trying to bring with our retreat houses. In addition the costs associated with road requirements and underground utilities would have used up over half of our funds and required us to scale back the project.

We began looking at other sites on the Valle Crucis property and found another beautiful site on top of Bishop's Ridge approximately 1/2 mile off Upper Crab Orchard Road in the Matney area. We explored using this piece and again found that in order to bring the road up to code and bury the utilities the costs would have been exorbitant. In addition most people to whom we showed the site expressed feelings of stress at being "so far off the road" and "so isolated". We decided that to begin someones private retreat by introducing an element of stress was probably not a good thing. However, when looking at this site we were able to identify numerous mature cherry and hickory trees. We contacted a local portable sawmiller Elwood Crestinger who came over from Tennessee in December 2007 and sawed these trees into boards which were then allowed to air dry over the winter and then were taken to their mill and kiln dried for 3 months and then tongue and groved. The cherry would become the walls in the chapel while the hickory would be used for the flooring. It was very cold up on Bishops Ridge!

So on to plan C. We had an old field that had been used in the 1960's as the site of the Earth Studies Program at ASU. Since that time the field had been allowed to grow up in weeds, briar's and small trees. It had the old but dismantled wind tower on site. It was right on Upper Crab Orchard Road, which is a dead end road, at the top of our property. The Conference Center also has 2 employee houses close to the site. And the best thing was that we would not have to spend as much of our funds on the infrastructure which would allow more of the funds to be used for the hermitages and chapel.

Photo of our property manager Dale Townsend with contractor Kevin and his constant companion Cloe

We began to show this site to friends associated with the project and they all liked it and felt good about its potential for our hermitage project. It was decided to move forward.