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It's so beautiful here.” This is a familiar
refrain, something often heard or said by
most anyone who has spent more than a few minutes, or most of a lifetime, in Rappahannock County. It could be said, of course, that it’s simply because of the county’s serendipitous junction of rolling pastures, with livestock and hay bales, forested hills and notvery-distant blue ridges - its scenic, natural beauty, in other words.
Many people have worked hard over the years in Rappahannock to protect that scenic beauty, as well as the ecosystems and economies that keep it that way. And it is this fact that gets closer to the element of “It’s so beautiful here” that we specifically wish to appreciate today: the many people who love this place, and who therefore work to make it better - all without expecting anything in return.
We’re thinking of people like Hal and Beverly Hunter, and their work to establish, respectively, the Plant-a-Row for the Hungry program, providing a way for those who have or raise food to help feed those who don’t, and RappFLOW, which helps county landowners protect and restore water resources and watersheds; of volunteers like Joan Platt and Fawn Evenson. carrying on Claudia Mitchell’s mission to beautify the town of Washington with flowers and plantings; and of the members of volunteer organizations too numerous to list here, starting with local fire and rescue squads and their auxiliaries and continuing on through local churches and such organizations as the Rappahannock Association for the Arts & the Community, Headwaters, the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection, and the Rappahannock County Conservation Alliance, to name just a fraction of them.
Of course, the work of these people and organizations helps make, and keep, Rappahannock County beautiful. But what we wanted to point out is that the extraordinary ethic of volunteerism and community spirit here is . . . well, it is beautiful in itself.
If you are one of these volunteers, the next time someone says to you, “Lfs so beautiful here,” please: Just go ahead and say, ?Thank you.” Because you helped make it that way.
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