Local News

The Orchard at Altapass: 'The closest you will get to heaven before you get to heaven'

When sibling duo Kit Trubey and Bill Carson heard their childhood happy place was being sold for development, they acted fast to preserve the land and keep its many traditions alive. Since buying The Orchard at Altapass in 1994, Kit has considered it her personal slice of heaven, tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Posted 2021-10-21T22:18:19+00:00 - Updated 2021-10-21T22:25:16+00:00
The Orchard at Altapass a 'slice of heaven' in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Rusty Painter holds a small stone in his hand as he strolls through the trees.

His wife, Carrie, and 11-year-old son, Ben, follow behind patiently, as he walks the boundaries of 120 acres of land that he’s helped protect for years.

The Painters make the trip to The Orchard at Altapass every year. They love picking apples, eating ice cream and watching people dance in the orchard’s pavilion.

For the past four years, they’ve taken this walk down the gravel trail to the left of the orchard’s apple shed and stopped near a cut piece of granite nestled in the grass.

There a plaque is engraved with a photo of a boy with puffy hair and a goofy, buck-toothed smile, holding a bag of apples. It reads: “William Landry Painter August 22, 2007 - August 6, 2017.”

Rusty lays the small stone he carries next to it and he, Carrie and Ben spend a minute there, thinking back to times at the orchard when they were a family of four.

“It’s kind of as close as we have to a gravesite for him,” Rusty said.

The Orchard at Altapass is a sacred place for Painters.

But if it weren’t for a decision made in 1994, the orchard might have been bulldozed down.

(Courtesy: Elise Mahon)
(Courtesy: Elise Mahon)

On a Wednesday in 1994, Kit Carson Trubey stood next to her brother, Bill Carson, as he wove rectangles on a loom he’d bought to pass time in retirement. She watched him for maybe five or 10 minutes before she got bored.

“You’re the only Type A, left-brain weaver I’ve ever seen,” she told him.

Instead, Kit sat on the couch and flipped through the Mitchell News-Journal. When she finished reading the articles, she moved to the classified ads. Anything to avoid watching more weaving.

That was when she saw it: “For Sale by Owner, Apple Orchard on the Parkway.”

“Bill!” Kit said. “Listen to this ad. Do you think it might be the orchard down the road that we always went to visit?”

Kit and Bill had grown up staying with their aunt in Little Switzerland along the Blue Ridge Parkway during summer vacations. They mined for gemstones, hiked waterfalls and wandered around the orchard down the road, eating apples right from the trees.

“These mountains are the closest you will get to heaven before you get to heaven because they embrace you,” Kit said. “These mountains make you feel loved.”

The siblings loved the mountains so much that both ended up settling down in North Carolina. Kit, with her husband, Mike, moved to Cary. Bill bought their aunt’s home in Little Switzerland and retired there with his wife, Judy.

And that home was where Kit and Bill sat, both in their 50s, realizing that they might never see the orchard they loved as children again.

They drove down to the parkway to see if the land for sale really was the same orchard.

When they got there, they only found what had always been there — rows of trees filled with red, yellow and golden apples. There was no for sale sign in sight.

Kit grew up believing that every person had a purpose, a mission during their lives. For more than 50 years, she hadn’t found hers. But on the drive back, she finally felt like she had. There was only one real choice to make about the land.

“If it’s on the parkway, we need to buy it,” she told Bill once they were back home.

“I’m only looking at one person in this room who could still afford to buy it,” he replied.

So, even though she wasn’t sure if the land for sale in the newspaper was the orchard, Kit looked back at the ad and dialed the landowner’s phone number.

By all accounts, William Painter was a special young man.

William always knew when his parents needed hugs, Rusty said. He understood that even mom and dad had bad days.

William would encourage his younger brother Ben when he was being dropped off for camp, coaxing him out of the car and reassuring him that it would be OK.

And though he had a shy, gentle spirit, Rusty said, William stood up when it counted.

During a visit to the orchard when William and his family sat listening to bluegrass music from a live band in the pavilion, a woman old enough to be his grandmother dragged him onto the dance floor.

Surrounded by people older and taller than him, a 6-year-old William held the woman’s hands and danced with her on the wooden floor of the pavilion, a warm smile on his blushing face.

“It was just one of those sweet moments,” Rusty said. “You’re a proud parent that your kid is mature enough to do that.”

William died two weeks before his 10th birthday in August of 2017.

“In less than 10 years, the amount of empathy for a kid his age and this love and respect and kindness — it was just amazing,” Rusty said. “It improved the lives of everybody.”

At his memorial service in Durham, a family friend who is Jewish shared the tradition of placing small stones on graves. One theory is that stones are more permanent than flowers, and leaving them on a grave symbolizes the permanent place that person has in their loved ones’ hearts.

Since then, it’s something Rusty has done to honor his son every time he’s stopped at the memorial stone at The Orchard at Altapass.

Kit was the fifth caller to the Florida landowner’s phone.

Four callers before her had gotten the answering machine. But her call came through when the landowner was coming through the door of his home, and he picked up.

Kit asked about the ad in the paper and said she wanted to buy the land. She’d pay in cash and close within the next few weeks — if he gave her overnight to pray about it. The first caller on the answering machine was a developer who had planned to build a subdivision on the land.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to promise me that you won’t sell to anybody else because I’ll pay your asking price,’” Kit said.

He agreed.

That night, Kit prayed. She promised to God, and to herself, that the land would never be developed into anything manmade. She wanted its natural beauty to stay.

The next morning, just before the 10 a.m. deadline, Kit called again.

(Courtesy: Elise Mahon)
(Courtesy: Elise Mahon)

The landowner in Florida offered up another 148 acres of land along the Blue Ridge Parkway for the same price.

In for a dime, in for a dollar, Kit thought. She said yes to buying 276 acres of land.

To Kit, it was a chance to fulfill her calling and save as much of the land around where she spent her childhood summers. In the weeks after she bought the orchard, she contacted the Conservation Trust for North Carolina to talk about how to protect the land for the years and summers to come — even those after she’s gone.

Rusty, as the land protection director at the Conservation Trust for North Carolina, has lent a hand in the preservation of the Orchard at Altapass. He visits the orchard each year as part of the Conservation Trust’s annual monitoring of its land protection projects.

As of 2015, the Conservation Trust had protected more than 4,285 acres of land around the Blue Ridge Parkway, including the orchard.

In 2017, Rusty’s co-workers at the Conservation Trust reached out to Bill about having a memorial for William at the orchard. It was the least he could do, to give Rusty’s son a place in the orchard he loved.

(Courtesy: Elise Mahon)
(Courtesy: Elise Mahon)

Bill and Rusty had worked together over the years to make sure Kit’s wishes to leave the orchard as it was were followed. Beyond the orchard itself, the Conservation Trust worked with Kit, Bill and his wife, Judy, to preserve hundreds of acres on and around the property.

Rusty, Bill said, was one of the three most important people in why the orchard has survived for so long.

“It was Sis for buying the land,” Bill said. “It was Rusty for the work he did for it that was all in favor of what Sis wanted, and it was my wife.”

As he’s speaking, Bill hears footsteps behind him and turns to find a line of people walking to pick apples, white paper bags in their hands. It’s a crowd like he’s never seen before.

“We’re having pretty good luck this year,” he says, watching people disappear into the orchard as he and Kit did when they were children.

From where he sits on the back porch of the orchard’s main building, Bill can see the stretch of mountains surrounding Blue Ridge Parkway that look as if they’ve been hand-painted into the horizon.

And though Bill has seen that view for decades, it’s as beautiful as ever.

And it will always stay that way.

Credits