Nearby

But, as with every fairy tale, Floyd is sitting close to the fire. Some people want to make the town a tourist destination, others want it unchanged. Its techies and wanderers may find a way to co-exist, and outside dollars can be a good thing, but talk to the old-timers here long enough and you’ll notice a refrain: We like our rough edges. Please don’t dress us up for brochures and busloads. Let us carry on, carrying on.

This is not to say that Floyd doesn’t welcome visitors. It does, with open arms and warm interest in others. But people here can spot you as an out-of-towner the minute you set foot in the coffee shop, and they’ll hope you’re not a developer with an eye on real estate prices.

Floyd is a self-reliant town, with people who’ve settled here intentionally, some from the mostly diminished days of communes, some of them grown children who’ve seen other places and returned here to raise their own. Artists have built a haven here—potters and photographers, painters and luthiers, all manner of musicians, gardeners and others who work with their hands and hearts—and they’re seeking a way of life that honors process over product.

It is a town unlike any other in Virginia, and Floyd’s West Coast sensibilities aren’t always easily reconciled with its fundamentalist beginnings. Small, hand-lettered signs posted outside town ask, “Are you ready to meet God?” Indeed, church parking lots are full on Sunday mornings and also on Wednesday nights. But an equally strong contingent piles into the Blue Ridge Restaurant downtown on Sunday mornings, hoping to beat the church crowd for a stack of buttered pancakes and possibly nursing a hangover from the night before. Moonshine is widely available here, but it can’t touch the local wines for provenance, let alone legality. In fact, there’s no ABC store in the county, and the thought of bringing one in remains highly controversial.

This is a live-and-let-live place, where “nobody’s trying to pass too many rules,” says gallery owner Joanne Bell, “and nobody’s really breaking any, either. There are so many people with different interests and ways of thinking, I feel that everyone is pretty much respected, and you don’t all have to be the same.” The business that she shares with her photographer husband William, Bell Gallery & Garden, is a community gathering spot that offers an appealing collection of local crafts and fine art. “People have had to create their own way of life here,” she observes, “and they are very resourceful. It takes a certain amount of gumption to haul in water and wood, to take care of yourself when the power goes out for days. You learn to make do with what you have, and people help each other and find their creative juices out of necessity.”