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Selu Conservancy provides a rich variety of academic and recreational
opportunities with the opening of the new retreat center.by Rob Tucker
elu Conservancy has many charms. As the new retreat center nears completion on the 375-acre tract of rolling woodlands, the dreams, hopes, and visions of those who have been seduced by the charms of this slice of paradise move closer to reality.
While hiking an old roadbed on the property one afternoon, English professor Ricky Cox and I discussed plans for the land and basked in the beauty of a bright April day resplendent in blooming redbud trees and dogwood.
A rustling of leaves interrupted our conversation and we stopped. A turkey 20 feet away darted into a stand of hardwoods and disappeared over a hill.
"Hunting season opened two days ago, so he's probably nervous," Cox said of the wild bird that sought refuge on the land. Refuge, recreation, scientific field study, historical research, inspiration, peace and quiet are some of the fresh opportunities the development of Selu Conservancy opens up for the university. Six miles south of campus, Selu has the advantage of being accessible, yet isolated. A 15-minute drive from campus or a ten-minute trip from I-81 brings you into a functional retreat environment amidst natural beauty.
"Selu provides a wonderful, great big outdoor classroom," said Cox, of the property named by Cherokee/Appalachian writer Marilou Awiakta after the "Corn Mother" spiritual entity of Cherokee beliefs.
The 4,100 square-foot retreat center will provide a home base for that open air classroom. It will house two main conference rooms, including a large open meeting room upstairs, which will be evocative of bygone times with a large stone fireplace, traditional Appalachian quilts decorating walls of hewn timber and chandeliers fashioned of deer antlers. The downstairs conference room is modeled on the seven-sided Cherokee council room featuring a colorful display of the mesmerizing yarn art of the Mexican Huichol Indians.
The seven-sided room will provide a "homey, comfortable, informal kind of setting that might inspire a different kind of thinking and feeling," said John Bowles, whose family donated the conservancy land. "With seven sides, no one side directly confronts another, which the Cherokee thought conducive to harmony in meetings and discussions. Hopefully, the dynamic will be one of cooperation."
Seven is a sacred number to many traditional peoples, Bowles said, and the seven sides represent the four points of the compass, the heavens above, the underworld and the center.
Owned by the RU Foundation, the retreat center includes dormitory-style sleeping quarters for 20 people, a kitchen and a two-bedroom apartment for the recently hired director of the conservancy, Jeff Armistead.
The front of the retreat center is constructed of logs, while the rear of the building is a frame structure. This design is intentional to reflect the lifestyle of early Appalachian residents of the area, who first built a log cabin from wood cut from the wilderness then later, as they grew more prosperous, their families grew and industrialization emerged in the region, often built a frame addition from lumber cut at newly operational saw mills.
A second-floor front porch affords a spectacular southern view of the Blue Ridge mountains, and on a clear spring day, it becomes obvious why the native peoples of the region first named them the "Blue Mountains."
"Stand on the porch of the retreat center and it's like you're looking into the wilderness. You see no traffic, no roads," said Dave Moore, a retired faculty member and former vice president for academic affairs who has been hired by the RU Foundation to help develop Selu. "The retreat center and surrounding land are unique to higher education, at least in Virginia."
That uniqueness and the beauty of the property enhances RU's appeal to potential students, and the eventual opening of the retreat center for community use will be an important outreach tool.
ven before taking up residence on the property, Armistead has tackled a project that illustrates the conservancy's potential. In cooperation with local students and teachers from Blacksburg, Giles, Narrows and Auburn high schools, Riner middle school and the RU biology club, about 100 American chestnut tree seedlings were planted on the property in early May.
The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) once dominated the Appalachian region, but was pushed to the brink of extinction by a blight. The American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation is attempting to bring back the massive trees known as "Redwoods of the East" by developing a blight resistant strain through experimental grafting and plantings. Selu is a perfect fit for the project with a pasture area "with the ideal northeast aspect for planting chestnuts," Armistead said.
Armistead thinks we could see a mature American chestnut on the property "in our lifetimes." That would be a wonder to behold as the trees grow to heights exceeding 100 feet and diameters of five feet and larger.
"Around the turn of the century," Armistead said, "this was the most common tree in the forests around here and throughout the East. It's been said that a squirrel could climb a chestnut tree in Maine and never touch ground until he reached Georgia."
Armistead also plans to develop a "turn-of-the-century" meadow including plants and grasses common to that era in the retreat center's front yard. He hopes to develop suitable habitat for locally scarce upland birds such as quail.
The property is already a "birder's paradise," said Moore, an ornithologist, who reports a multitude of common species along with sightings of bald eagles soaring above the property's Little River border and uncommon birds such as golden-winged warblers and ruffed grouse.
Moore cites the land's great diversity of habitat as providing excellent opportunities for biology and geology students to do field studies. "We have open fields, woods that haven't been timbered in the last 30 years, woods that have been more recently timbered, immature woodlands, mature forests, marshes and wetlands and the Little River running right through it all," Moore said. "This marvelous mix of habitats is just ripe for serious field research."
To support that research, a science laboratory building is planned for the future. Land has been cleared about 200 yards from the retreat center, but funding isn't currently available to complete the building, which would be designed to accommodate large groups of RU students on field trips. RU's astronomy department also hopes to utilize the science building to permanently mount a large telescope, which would provide ideal viewing conditions without interference from reflected light of surrounding towns.
Funding is also needed to build a two-story frame reproduction of an original home that early residents lived in. The frame house would serve as headquarters for the Living History Museum envisioned by Grace Toney Edwards, director of RU's Appalachian Regional Studies Center. The museum will include two previously restored log buildings - a smokehouse and a crib - that are clustered around a working garden of corn, potatoes, squash and beans that has been planted and harvested by Edwards, Cox, Bowles, several Appalachian Studies students and others.
The house will be furnished with period furniture common in the 1930s, the time period the museum will interpret, Edwards said.
The 1930s were chosen, Edwards adds, because the generation that lived in that era is still alive and oral histories of the times can be reconstructed through interviews, projects that Appalachian Studies and anthropology students can pursue.
The decade of the '30s was also a key transitional time in American agricultural history because industrialization was just beginning. Time and labor saving devices were sounding the death knell for a rural lifestyle that had changed little since the Jeffersonian agrarian times.
"We're still researching the time period, formulating plans and deciding how to develop the museum," Edwards said. "We envision it as a place where students could come and spend an hour up to half a day to experience some of the traditional farming activities or perhaps learn how and why logs were notched a certain way."
"We want the farm to teach both RU students and local public school students about the kind of living people would have experienced in this area 50 to 60 years ago," said Cox. "Some children will be able to see life as their grandparents lived it."
Moore tells the story of Radford resident Kermit Kenley, who used to farm the property along with his father in the 1930s. In 1933, when the city of Radford was completing the Little River dam that now stands a short distance from the conservancy, the Kenleys had a corn crop ready to harvest on lower levels of the land.
"City officials came to the Kenleys," Moore said, "and told them 'We're going to activate the dam, but it won't affect your corn crop.' When the dam went in, the Kenleys saw the water coming up and it was obvious that it was going to flood the corn, so they rushed into town to talk to one of the city council members, who offered them a cash settlement as compensation for the flood damage and also told them they could pick the corn if they could get to it.
"So Kermit and his dad went out in boats and they rowed up and down the rows of corn, picking the corn and throwing it on the bank. They saved most of the crop so they got their corn and the cash too."
Edwards, a folklorist, has heard different versions of the same story from different sources. "It's fascinating to me how stories of this sort travel and change, " she said. "That's exactly what happens in oral tradition."
ther features of the property include Richard's Riverfront, a recreation center donated by the Bowles Family in memory of Richard Bowles. It features a boat dock on the riverfront, and a boathouse. Canoe trips will provide relaxing recreation on the river as it gently flows beneath impressive vertical limestone bluffs. Another recreational opportunity will be provided by an interpretive hiking trail which will showcase some of the resident flora and fauna, and environmental sculptures installed along the path. The trail's linkage of nature and culture echoes the university's year-long theme of Corn and Culture.
Bowles has been intimately involved in Corn and Culture, the display of his donated collection of Huichol Art in the university galleries and the development of Selu.
"It is a privilege to have the role of philanthropist and give land, because it means you've got some surplus," Bowles said. "In our society, there are people with surplus, but in many tribal societies, such as the Cherokee and Huichol, land is held communally so it's unlikely for any individual to have much surplus. With the land shared by all, no one could be in the position of being either benevolent or greedy."
The land has had an interesting journey to the university from Bowles' grandmother, Kelly Bess Moneyhun, who was given the property in the mid 1940s upon the death of her second cousin, Solis Peters. An ill Peters had appeared on her doorstep in the early 1930s in need of care. Moneyhun cared for him in a nursing capacity for about 15 years.
"She changed a lot of sheets and bedpans," Bowles said. "And in gratitude, Solis Peters left her the land. She in turn gave it to two of her sons, and they in turn gave it to children of theirs.
"We wanted to donate the land because it seemed inappropriate to sell for money something that was a gift my grandmother earned in such a loving and caring way."
Bowles has kept a 10-acre plot of land within Selu, and uses a log cabin there for his own personal retreats. He plans to enjoy it, but ultimately he intends to reunite it with the rest of the conservancy as his final gift to the university.
Corn and Culture in Context
Students examined the social, economic and religious significance of corn and found tangible links between modern and ancient American cultures.
By Kathie Dickenson
Huichol Magic
An RU graduate shares her fascination with the unique art of the Huichol Indians.
By Kathy Hensley
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