By Tim Jon By the time I arrived, they were all resting – at peace – sleeping the approximate six feet underground; I’d driven up to the Village of Waterford from the south, with a journey through fog and dense greenery – not to mention some incredibly rough roads – and – quite unexpectedly came…

By Tim Jon I was so anxious to explore this place, I arrived long before sunrise and forced myself to wait in my car until I could at least justify the camera in my pocket; I’d made the discovery – just a few days before my visit – of a new ‘sleeping giant’ of a…

By Tim Jon I am not one to dwell in the past; in the performance of my six-day-a-week job, my colleagues and I generally work at such a frantic pace that we joke about forgetting our own names. That’s not as far from the truth as you might guess, what with mail carriers expected to…

By Tim Jon Next time I stop in, I want to hear the birds sing, as I took an early morning stroll around the land set aside as the Burial Ground for the Enslaved at Belmont. I found the silence broken only by the nearby traffic on Route Seven – with the motorists – understandably…

By Tim Jon  The place appeared to be sleeping, the last time I visited. And that was fine, as I’d driven from my home in Leesburg that morning – coming up through the Town of Middleburg and then on a series of unpaved roads – passing through the small community of Bloomfield on the way.…

By Tim Jon Complete isolation, peace and quiet can be quite rare commodities these days in the thriving Northern Virginia County of Loudoun, but these conditions prevailed on my first-ever drive down the entire length of today’s subject of discovery. The relative tranquility I found fought for attention, though, with the general rural nature of…

By Tim Jon This—I thought—is pretty much quintessential 21st Century Loudoun County: a hurried motorist speeding by—within just a few inches—of an historic relic, which has stood so long that many of us may be forgiven for temporarily forgetting its otherwise quite formidable presence.  Yeah, I know, that’s a lotta words and images and other…

By Tim Jon I knew nothing of the late Mervin Jackson of Leesburg, Virginia, when I first moved to town; having said that, I wouldn’t have been surprised (even back then) at his existence. I remember first hearing a description of his character by a trusted friend (this being on the eve of Jackson being…

By Tim Jon There were two paths from which to choose: one, well-paved and more civilized, stuck to the wooded area and playground; the other, rough and rocky, descended – seemingly to the original, infernal pit itself. I chose the latter, of course. Pulling into the parking area for Trailhead Park in Ashburn, I could…

By Tim Jon  The morning of my last visit, it felt as if the slate of the entire world would be wiped clean; a very pronounced wind made its presence felt, as the actual temperature hadn’t risen appreciably enough above the freezing mark – at least for my sensitive tastes.  Sensitive, that is, for someone…