How We Came to Own a Mountain, or An Off-Grid Dream in the Making

View from Piney Point, named for the strong scent of pine trees.

UPDATED: 2/5/2023

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For years we have talked about the idea of buying a chunk of land as our own personal getaway for hiking, camping, and relaxing. For most of those years, the reality was quite a ways out of reach. A distant dream at best.

In the past handful of years it become less distant, more possible, and I spent more hours than I’d like to count trolling realtor.com and zillow.com to check out available land. In the first six months of COVID, we began looking a bit more seriously because after all, you can’t get much safer than your own private, isolated vacation spot.

But just when you decide you want to do something, it’s the details that get in the way. How much land do we want? What kind of land features should it have? Where do we want it to be located? How on earth do you go about purchasing land?

After perhaps 15 months of considering our options, we finally had answers (more-or-less). We decided we wanted enough land to feel remote. We wanted it to have elevation to be cooler in the summers and offer views, to be near other land that wouldn’t likely be developed, and to have some water source. We were interested in a place with some sort of pre-existing structure (ideally) like a rustic cabin. We reviewed multiple climate change projections to find a location that would be better off than others in the decades ahead. One of the two regions we identified based on the future climate would be a full day of driving from our home, and we realized that having a place we could get away to very easily for weekends was an important factor. Luckily the higher elevations of the nearby Blue Ridge mountains were our second choice for a general location and should be relatively good for the foreseeable climate changes.

In the early days of 2022, we decided we were ready to do this for real. We started identifying specific land plots that appealed to us. We drove to one about two hours north in a gorgeous location on a 20-acre mountainside lot with a creek and rustic cabin. We took a half-day trip around several west/central counties in Virginia to view several locales and quickly ruled out that section of the state as too flat. There was a piece of land that had been put on the market in late 2021 one county over from where we live. It had some pretty views in the photos, but it lacked any major water feature or cabin so we steered clear initially.

What we observed is that properties with any type of structure - from fancier to rustic cabins - had pending sales almost immediately. When we had our realtor follow-up on a few, we learned they had multiple offers within a couple of days of listing. Prices seemed to be increasing for land in a different, although parallel, way to houses.

We decided it would be worth a trek out to the abode-free, water-free land that had been sitting on the market for several months at that point. We made the drive in late winter on a beautiful, sunny day with temperatures in the 60s.

And we found our land. Or, more accurately, our mountain.

130 acres of it, which is more than we had originally thought buy.

At one point growing up, my family had a house on ten acres, so I thought I could roughly comprehend 130 acres. I couldn’t.

Our first visit. You can see the difference between the winter view and spring views when comparing this to the photo at the top of this post!

the route to our mountain

The drive from our house is about an hour. The route takes us into an area that is increasingly rural with houses dotting the roadside at less frequency. Finally, we turn down a storybook-perfect treelined road with an antebellum estate straight ahead. The country road winds around through a perfect bucolic setting of grazing horses, open fields, a babbling creek with a small waterfall. A couple of bridges cross over an increasingly large river that you can’t help but want to wade in - clear water flowing across a pebbled shore.

When you drive with the window down, the songs of local birds and babbling water make up the soundtrack for the drive.

The access to our land is hidden. After fording a creek (and yes, every time I think of Oregon Trail, an early computer game that was popular when I was a kid), there is a locked gate to keep trespassers out. Beyond that point is a shared access road that connects to about seven properties. After fording a second creek, we drive 1.5 miles uphill - a 1,000 foot elevation climb - from there to the lowest reaches of our 130 acres. The dirt road is quite stable, at times rocky and steep, and follows a beautiful creek. If you were to hike this road, it would be a beautiful forested hike.

At the top of the road is an open meadow where the access road continues on in several directions, running along two boundaries of our land for about a third of a mile in either direction.

When we first visited, it was winter. Most of the trees were bare. We have watched the woods enliven into their early spring glory. When we visited for the first time after buying the property, we discovered a few flowering dogwood trees and the early buds of Mountain Laurels. Now, the earliest ones are blooming, a smattering of white and pale pinks against the hazy light green background of a springtime (mostly) deciduous forest.

The first weekend after we closed on the property was cold and a tad rainy, but we were able to build a quick fire pit and eat lunch by our first fire.

From the bottom to the top of our acreage is a 1,000 elevation gain, which is a lot. Most of the lower area is on a soft incline with spots for camping and other future activities. At the top is the tallest mountain in the vicinity. We have only gotten as high as about 350-400 feet up, and we have no idea what is on the part of our property on the other side of the mountain peak. That’s the really cool thing - every time we go, we find new trails that prior owners had created and explore new places. At some point, we want to make it up to the top of the mountain and see what will only be amazing views, but that will not be an easy trek!

We have a huge list of projects and ideas for what we want to do, but we’re trying to be smart about how we prioritize. First up: creating a camping spot that is cleared and flat enough so we can get up there soon, our three dogs in tow. Priority two: creating a fenced area for our dogs so they can enjoy the outdoors comfortably.

We found a great initial camping spot that is a short walk uphill from a place where we can park the car. We have created and cleared a path up to it and started felling the smaller trees to clear a space. I am getting slightly more proficient with a saw, and Dustin is enjoying his new chain saw.

Our land - which we have named Laurel Ridge - has already shown us a handful of surprises - large, found objects scattered in the forest - but those stories will keep for another day!

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