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Editor’s note: Jim Harris is back with another column, this time focusing on his experiences with Willis Mountain through the years. You can read more of his columns by clicking here. 

Now that I’m 82 years old, you might say that Willis Mountain in Buckingham County has been the rock that helped with my family’s success. We lived at Kingsville in Prince Edward County, but we were always drawn to the mountain.  At times when looking to the north as we drove to Farmville and near the present location of Lowe’s on Highway 15, you could see the mountain jutting above the landscape. 

My mother, Nell Fitzpatrick Harris (1912-2009), was raised on the west side of the mountain and the family of my wife, Caryl Shepard Harris, was brought up on the east side of the mountain.  

Nell introduced my sister Anne (1938-2009) and I to the mountain when I was about eight years old. Anne was 13. We climbed the round mountain and Mom said as I remember at a young age, “You can’t see it very well for the trees, but the family farm is over there. When I was a kid you could look down on the skeletons of dead chestnut trees.” 

The trees were wiped out by blight. The family farm was about a mile in the distance.

My father, James (Tigger) Edward Harris, Sr.(1902 -1955) would  stop on unpaved Route 609 when leaving the home place to shoot squirrels with a 22 rifle  from a tall oak . If a game warden ever questioned him about where he shot the squirrels all the game warden had to do was look at the red mud inevitably coated on the 1941 Mercury.  

Spending time up on the family farm

After I was age 12 and when Dad died, I spent many days at the family farm. They were mainly with Metellus “Tellus” Fitzpatrick (1900-1994), my uncle. Tellus was a no non-sense guy and expected you to basically get up with the sun and to be involved in everything around the farm. 

Mostly he grew watermelons in the low grounds along the Willis and Tongue Quarter Rivers winding near the mountain and a pretty good garden near the house.  The noon and evening meals usually had  staples such as potatoes ,string beans, and corn but breakfast always consisted of toast burnt on each side in an iron pan.  The kitchen kindling stove also cooked the ham and eggs.

When you ascended the high ground on the west  side of the farm while looking for squirrels for the latest stew  you could easily see the mountain and even think about wandering over to it and giving it a good climb for awe-inspiring views in the winter.

Tellus and I were avid deer hunters and when his blue tick and red herring hounds struck deer they sometimes ran straight for the mountain. 

The most memorable chase was when I followed the hounds at a run on Route 609 and a truck hit a buck crossing Highway 15. Being as tough as bucks are, it kept going and apparently went in the gap between the round and the long mountains. Tellus and I climbed the gap but never found the buck but the serenity and beauty in and from the gap were beyond description.    

I spent so much time on the farm in Buckingham County that relatives said I wouldn’t amount to much. Little did they know that not only was I being educated by the foibles of nature (especially animals and birds) but I faithfully read all of Tellus’ detective magazines.      

Educated by nature on Willis Mountain

They didn’t know that being out there put me in extreme physical condition (even though I suffered in the spring with severe hayfever) and at Farmville High School/Fuqua Academy I played first string in football, basketball, and baseball. I was co-captain with Lewis (Skeeter) Fore of the baseball team.  My sports background is probably what got me into UVA. Talking about agility, I quickly gained it when crossing logs over the Willis or Tongue Quarter Rivers.  After UVA, I got a master’s degree from VCU.

In Charlottesville, when Caryl and I drive up Carter’s Mountain to get some peaches or other fruit above Monticello, I get up on the platform there and on a clear day, I can gaze at Willis Mountain in the distance. When Tellus was in the UVA Hospital, he said, “I want to go on the south side of the mountain.” His request was met when he passed in a nursing home at Fork Union.   

How did I find Farmville Airport when learning how to fly on the G. I. Bill? Of course if I wandered around too much in the sky and didn’t know exactly where I was I only had to check the Willis Mountain landmark and easily find the airport. Occasionally I even buzzed the mountain and the family farm  in the Piper Cherokee 235B that I owned with Lloyd White and Dennis Critzer to see if Tellus paid any attention to me.  

Within the last three years I joined the Goodloe Hunt Club, west of Buckingham Court House. On a good day you can see the foothills of the Blue Ridge from club stands but what I really enjoy is to get in the stand facing the Willis Mountain and spend my time gazing at it. Hopefully no bucks slip by when doing so.

When I was an administrator at Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center, people knew I understood the woods and I was put in charge of the Escape and Apprehension Committee.  Initially we had dogs to track escaped youth but later when we couldn’t use dogs (because it offended some General Assembly members) we tracked youth by wood lore knowledge.  None got away. 

Nell and Tellus are buried in a family plot in Westview Cemetery in Farmville. With the right elevation (which for certain they now have) they can see the Willis Mountain. “Buckingham  Always” is on Nell’s tombstone . She was proud of her work with Anne and me and her last coherent words were “We did alright, didn’t we?”   

Dixon Mining got it wrong

Dixon Mining Company claimed in the 1950s that the Willis Mountain would be flattened in a hundred years. The company did quite a job on the long mountain but the round mountain remains intact. A star on it lights up at Christmas time.  

The mountain was left standing high above a plain scrapped out by the Ice Age. It will always be in my mind, especially as I doze off to sleep each night and I bet it’s on a lot of peoples’ minds who love the mountain and the beauty it gives in a place where probably a mountain shouldn’t have been. 

The old rock gave me many happy experiences and other members of my family were drawn to the mountains as well. Our son, James (Jeb) Edward Harris III settled in the Green Mountains of Vermont.  Our daughter Julie Elizabeth Zebrowski  settled in California. On a good day, one can see the San Gabriel Mountains from where she lives and Anne, who also lived in California, is buried near the same mountains. 

Our back porch has a sign saying, “Mountains Are Calling.” Yes they are, especially Willis Mountain.          

James (Jim) Edward Harris, Jr. grew up in Buckingham and Prince Edward counties. His mother, Nell, grew up near the Willis Mountain and waited for Jim, his son – Jeb, and another teenager at Wingina when they canoed from Bent’s Creek in the same canoe in 1990. Then the water was so low that the group had to push the canoe through the rocks. Jeb is a true outdoorsman who lives in a timber frame house he built for his family in Vermont.