Arcadia is the name we gave to our 83 acre mountainside retreat center for Earth-Based Spirituality.
We are Fran and Matt and we live at Arcadia Sanctuary aimed along the lines of Four Quarters, Findhorn, and Brushwood. We are a diverse community of nature and music lovers with a camping, music, wildlife, and education venue in Western Amherst County, Virginia.
The Land is nestled on the south-eastern slope of 4000-foot Mount Pleasant in Central Virginia, convenient to 181. (Note, there is a town called Arcadia off 181, but that is not us- not to confuse.)
We have a mountain creek with waterfalls, towering Beech and Sycamore trees, Witch Hazels leaning over the water, trout, crayfish, snakes, salamanders, and all the rest. We have about 2000 feet of vertical mountainside with trails to explore. However, the stage and most of the camping is down closer to creek-level.
We have one of the finest private stages on the East Coast with a top-notch sound system and a natural amphitheater which is like a single pie wedge of a Stadium.
A bit about us.
I (Fran) am originally from Gloucestershire in the United Kingdom where I grew up on a small farm with my parents and six siblings. We were virtually self-sufficient, keeping cows and chickens and growing most of our own fruits and vegetables. This was back in the 1960s. I spent a lot of my early adulthood traveling around England, Scotland, and Wales, protesting for nuclear disarmament and going from festival to festival. Winters were spent in buses, teepees and benders . At 30, I decided to go pursue higher education, having left school with barely any qualifications, and earned a degree in social work and psychology. This led to a two-decade career in human services.
After 20 years I decided I wanted to leave social care work and do some more traveling. I met Matt/Rock in 2013, who proved to be the love of my life, and in 2015 I settled here (for now). I see myself as a world traveler having been to Africa, Australia, Bali. Belize, Corfu, Gibraltar, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Portugal, South Africa, and Spain. There might be a few I have missed. I always tried to immerse myself in different cultures and get away from the tourist attractions. In becoming a resident of Arcadia Sanctuary, I am grateful to have been able to use the many and varied skills I have learned on my journey through this life and enjoy watching it grow organically into the place it has become.
Matt’s father is the only peacenik in a large family of catholic warriors, a college football player from Pittsburg PA. Matt’s mother was the only child of clothing store merchant parents. After the failure of Rose Hall shops in Virginia Beach when he was 8, Matt’s parents moved to Amherst County- about 5 miles from Arcadia- and tried to be back-to-the-land organic farmers. He attended prep-school at Virginia Episcopal School and went to England on an ESU scholarship. Then he attended the School of International Service at American University in Washington DC and Virginia Commonwealth University.
He moved to Arcadia Sanctuary in January 1996 when he was 29 with his first wife. They were initiated in a spiritual path that involved acquiring land and making it sacred to an eclectic mix of Native-American and global spirits which we still follow today.
Please Visit our other sites!
http://www.mondojellykings.com/ for more on the Band and Shows!
http://herbhw.com/ for Fran’s Clinical Herbalism Business!
http://www.skepticalsurrealist.com/ for Rock’s musings on politics, religion, and anything else that may offend or blow minds.