Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Mountainside residents relish snow and solitude
From today's paper
- Mountainside residents relish snow and solitude
- School roof collapses under weight of snow
- Roanoke's 1,200 miles of streets called 'passable'
- Weather Journal: Christmas stocking full of ice, rain, wind
More winter weather resources
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Be grateful you don’t live on Solonevich Road.
The snow plow just got there Tuesday.
“The guy with the plow just left,” confirmed Thomas Weddle when a reporter called about 5 p.m. Weddle and half a dozen others live on the winding dirt road on the north side of Sheep Mountain in Roanoke County, between Bent Mountain and Masons Knob.
Weddle said there hadn’t been a vehicle on the road since Friday’s storm until the snow plow arrived Tuesday.
Not that he’s complaining.
“It’s gorgeous,” said Weddle, who has spent the past four days cleaning house, reading Dan Brown’s latest novel and digging pathways for his pets through the snow.
Solonevich Road is named for George and Inga Solonevich, World War II refugees from Europe who settled on the mountain more than 50 years ago.
Inga Solonevich, who still lives on the mountain at the age of 94, weathered this storm at the house of her daughter and son-and-law, Ulita and Skip Taliaferro, closer to Roanoke.
But others, such as Weddle, a postal worker, and Nikki Litwiller, co-owner of Mojo Cafe on Brambleton Avenue, stuck it out. Litwiller walked out through the woods Tuesday to a switchback lower down the mountain where she had left her car — a distance of about a mile, she said.
She’s used to it. When friends who live in the city fret about a coming snowstorm, Litwiller said, “I’m like, ‘Oh, cry me a river.’ It’s been known for us to have to hike till spring.”
The residents say the gift of solitude, just a 15-minute drive from Tanglewood Mall during good weather, outweighs any disadvantages.
“That’s why we live up here,” Litwiller said.
“It’s worth it,” Weddle said. “Easily.”
