This article appeared in the Spring 2009 Piedmont View.

Neighbors in the Graves Mill Valley in Madison have protected 2,700 acres.

When floodwaters severed the road into the Graves Mill valley in 1995, Keith Wagner was stranded on the other side with his five-year-old son-separated from the rest of his family and from the 1,500 acre farm that he was responsible for managing. Because of Shenandoah National Park, the roads through Graves Mill don't connect to other roads. The main road and its offshoots trace the river valley, climb a short way up the slopes of the mountains and end, at the forest's edge. Other people in Mr. Wagner's situation hiked in over Blakey Ridge, but Mr. Wagner, who was recovering from a badly broken leg, couldn't do that. The emergency crews wouldn't fly him home because they were in the business of evacuating people out.

Finally, Mr. Wagner drove to the point where the river had torn away the road. The bridge stood, but just beyond it the earth had given way, so the road ended in a sheer drop. Someone had propped a ladder against it, which Mr. Wagner climbed down. Then he waded across a rivulet, using a crutch in one hand to steady him while he held onto his child with the other. He made it into the valley just before a helicopter flew his wife and their youngest child out, and he went to work, attending to cattle and clearing the masses of debris that the vast waters had deposited on fields and fences.

That flood brought the Graves Mill community together, Mr. Wagner says. In the steep-sloped valley, the devastation was real. Whole houses had slipped in mudslides. "People were helping each other, running around to see who was still in their homes, who was still alive." Afterward, the vacant Graves Mill Chapel became a community center, and the neighbors started gathering for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and a summer picnic. And, they brought a sense of shared purpose to land conservation.

Andre Hinterman started it, in 2006, by protecting the 1,500 acre farm that Mr. Wagner was managing. Now, seven families have acted to protect their land, for a total of almost 2,700 acres in the narrow valley. "The neighborhood is saying we want to preserve what we have," Mr. Wagner says. "The neighbors were an encouragement." Last year, he and his wife Diane and their five children decided to donate a conservation easement on their 142 acre farm, where they raise cattle and a few horses.

Keith and Diane Wagner wrote to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which holds the easement: "The heritage of what we give our children is not in the parceling of land being divided up for monetary value, but in the beauty and strength of character that the land produces in each of us who have lived on it. This is what we wish to pass on, and it can only be accomplished by preserving our property as a whole."

Mr. Wagner says that raising their five children (who have produced twelve grandchildren) on the farm, surrounded by mountains, helped to cultivate values like a strong work ethic, a sense of joy outdoors, closeness among family members and respect for the land.

He says, "The thinking today is oh, here is a beautiful spot... And they don't realize. They think, okay, I'm putting houses up in a beautiful spot. And once you mass all these structures together, you lose the beautiful spot. If people want that, there are plenty of places designated for that kind of situation. But why come out here and ruin what you can't create anymore? Once it's changed, it doesn't go back. This is the genesis here. This is the creation."

Read more articles from the Spring 2009 Piedmont View