I set aside my camera for the most part this past weekend and enjoyed the company of others at Shrine Mont, a retreat center in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia, a welcome respite from the restrictions of the past two years. From time to time I would pull out my cell phone and capture a moment, but the most significant memories of the retreat are embedded in my heart and in my head.
There are lots of small cabins and other buildings scattered throughout the large property that encompasses over 1100 acres of forest, but the building that attracts your eye first is the massive Virginia House, shown in the second photo below. The Virginia House was formerly known as the Orkney Springs Hotel. It was built in 1873 and restored in 1987. At approximately 96,000 square feet, it is believed to be the largest wooden structure in Virginia.
On Sunday we participated in worship at the open-air Cathedral Shrine of the Transfiguration that serves as the Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, shown in the third photo below. The Shrine was built from 1924 to 1925 in the space of a natural amphitheater and includes a bell tower, a sacristy, a shrine crossing, choir and clergy stalls, a pulpit, a font and a lectern. Each of its stones was pulled by horse or rolled by local people from the mountain that embraces it, according to Wikipedia, and the baptismal font was originally a dugout stone used by Indians to grind corn.
As I was sitting in the outdoor pews during the church service, I happened to glance to the side and caught sight of a dozen or so Pink Lady’s Slipper orchids in bloom at the edge of the forest. Earlier that morning I had traipsed through the mud in search of some of these flowers that one of my fellow retreat members had spotted the previous day, and here there was an even greater abundance in plain sight. I was delighted to share my find with others when the service ended and it turned out that many of them had never seen a Lady’s Slipper in the wild or had not seen one since they were children.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 