By BONNIE PRICE LOFTON

By BONNIE PRICE LOFTON

Rappahannock News Contributing Writer

Twenty-one years ago, when I was 17, my father and mother paid $45,000 for 90 acres near Woodville. My father, a Fairfax County schoolteacher, wanted to set up a small summer camp where inner-city children could come for free.

First, however, he and my librarian-mother had to put their three children through College. Then Dad weathered a serious illness. He never regained the stamina he had, and his dream of a summer camp died. So my parents contented themselves spending weekends and summers in their dilapidated farmhouse outside Woodville.

“Windy Hill Farm,” as they named it, became the Komeplace I never felt I had in the suburbs of Washington D.C. I hated living in Fairfax County, for reasons that have taken my a long time to understand.

Certainly, it wasn’t my parents’ house. It was big--five bedrooms, three levels. It was surrounded my magnolia trees and flowers planted by my mother. It was on a quiet culde-sac in a safe neighborhood. And we were only a block from my high school.

But I felt dead living there. My only contact with the neighbors was occasional babysitting jobs. My school was massive-1,700 kids-and my friends widely dispersed. Most of my time was spent traversing dense shopping corridors or housing developments in a car. Shopping was my main recreation.

At Windy Hill, it was different. People came and stayed a while, just visiting. We hiked around the sorrounding mountains or played volleyball. Sometimes we rode the nags who grazed on my parents’ pasture. Quiet pleasures, relaxed relationships. A real home and community. Not just a place to mow the lawn and sleep.

Today my parents are retired and live year-around in a new house they built at Windy Hill. My mother’s brother bought land next door. And everybody in the clan considers Woodville home.

I tell you this background to explain my mixed feelings as I sat in