The Old House on the Hill

The Old House on the Hill

Crimson rays of sunlight speckled through and glittered the autumn leaves, making their colorful silhouette seem to dance on the mountain horizon. These fluttering hills rise up from the back of a vast plateau like pasture as if they were titans, peacefully awaiting the turn from day to dusk. A calm breeze feathers the tall sun spotted grasses with an inconsistent motion making the ground appear alive. In the back corner of this field lies a large and seemingly mystifying old two-story house. It carry’s a worn and weathered look. The roof is black tin with no gutters, the house constructed of only large unpainted wooden planks. Supported underneath only by enormous creek rocks the house has been standing for more than one hundred years. There is a full wrap around porch all along two complete sides of the house, the supporting posts scattered with mud dobber holes and the wood darkened from perilous exposure to the elements. From the porch there is little to be seen but Mother Nature. In this back corner of the field a forest of ever looming trees surrounds the two porch sides of the house. The close ones reach far into the sky as if tickling the silver lining of the evening clouds. Though only for a few hundred feet, as the land, forest and trees all seemingly disappear on their downward descent into the gullies which encompass two sides of the plateau. From the porch a faint trickle can be heard from the two conjoining streams a few hundred yards below. In this time of transition from day to night you can begin to hear the faint call of a “Whip-or-will” that so compliments the light rustling of leaves and the babbling brook below.

This place breathes with a serenity that cannot help but be felt by anyone who experiences it, but to get there is a journey itself. There is not even a gas station where you get off the interstate just a two-lane country road filled with endless curves and rolling hills of amazing scenery. Forty minutes later you turn off onto a gravel road, next through a creek, then up a giant hill and into an old graveyard the size of a football field. There is an eeriness here that cannot be denied,