Chapter 1
Most people were a little bit afraid of Iris Rutherford’s paintings. The strange ones, at least. And so many of them were strange.
Her home town of Maple Ridge, Virginia, was a former mining camp that hung on when most of the old company coal and timber towns in Appalachia dried up and blew away. Part of it was the stunning beauty of the mountaintop community. Once clearcut and barren, the steep mountains and deep, blue valleys now held mature oaks, pines, poplars, and of course, several stands of huge old sugar maples.
A few people complained bitterly not long after the turn of the century when soaring white windmills appeared to sprout out of the forest, following the curves of the highest ridge lines. Decades later, agreements with a university to test new designs led to fr
