The universal language
The road gets smaller and smaller to Ron and Rachel Clearfield’s home. Pavement turns to gravel, then to dirt, the route lined by majestic rolling hills and thick woods. It’s Saturday and the sun is shining. Rachel is raking around her garden. She stops and waves with a smile. Soon, Ron saunters out of the couple’s house and extends a warm handshake.
Tucked away in the hills of Western North Carolina, the Clearfield’s three-acre property is located in Leicester, N.C. Rachel is a fine art painter, jeweler, and jack-of-all-trades. Ron is a professional cellist and conductor for the Asheville Youth Orchestra. They’ve been married almost 30 years and their story is as unique and rich as their humble abode, a place that’s now being opened up to the curious public. With the recent construction of a guest cottage, those looking for inspiration and solitude can now come and find a pleasant weekend in the countryside.
“We’ve manifested this place from what’s inside of us,” Rachel said. “We want to use this property for the greater good. The beauty of what we’ve made and what was already here, we want to use it to uplift people.”
Born and raised in post-World War II England, Rachel was an autodidact, a self-taught prodigy fascinated with anything and everything, jumping from one project or place to another without hesitation. She was a restless explorer, something that remains deeply rooted within her to this day.
“I was the middle child, so I could get away with everything,” she said. “I used to take my horse and just disappear into the moors where the red deer ran.”
Her family was upper middle class conservative, with her father running three movie theaters and a restaurant. Creativity was a common thread through their genetics. The seven children found some artistic niche to keep occupied.
“We were pretty wild,” she said. “There were so many kids they couldn’t keep track of us.”
Rachel knew from a very young age she wanted to be an artist. It seemed, to her, that there really was no other option. She was a gypsy child, one who let her imagination run wild.
“I never really had a choice because at school I was so spacey, a big dreamer,” she said. “The only thing I was really good at was art and handwriting.”
And as the “Swinging 60s” began to take shape in England and abroad, change was in the air. Rachel soon went to art school and immersed herself in an array of new ideas, from music to people, art to fashion. She found herself watching The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in small Newcastle clubs, years before their sound exploded into mainstream society, forever changing the face of culture around the globe. Nothing was the same, everything was the same, and yet the world seemed like a much bigger place to her.
“I was really able to come from within myself and focus with the art and being with nature,” she said.
Though she was studying fashion, her heart yearned to paint. Her parents told her to stay with fashion, that she wouldn’t be able to make a living as an artist. But, her deep desires got the best of her and soon she left art school and took off for Amsterdam.
“And I didn’t want to be like my parents, God forbid. They were so straight,” she said. “They didn’t want me to marry someone that couldn’t provide me with our standard of living, so of course I was very rebellious.”
With a job in Amsterdam illustrating for an advertising company, Rachel found herself hitting a crossroads. The work paid the bills, but the stress and other factors didn’t seem to add up. She eventually quit the agency and decided to illustrate as a freelancer, picking up things here and there. She was living paycheck to paycheck, a vast contrast compared to her upbringing, but now she was free and, most of all, had time to paint.
“When I painted, I was coming from somewhere deep inside,” she said. “I wasn’t spacey when I painted. It was my reality much more than the so-called reality of the outer world.”
On the other side of the Atlantic, Ron was growing up outside of Washington, D.C. He came from a long line of professional musicians. His grandfather a fine pianist from Russia, father a clarinetist, and mother a singer and music teacher.
“I was surrounded by musicians,” he said. “There was always music going on around me as a child.”
With two older brothers, Ron and his siblings were destined to become musicians—at least that’s what their family had hoped. Ron’s father tried unsuccessfully to get them to study and practice, eventually throwing his hands in the air, about to give up. It was then Ron came across an old violin one day.
“It was destiny,” he said. “I literally went up to the attic and found this violin. I brought it to my father and said I wanted to play it. He was overjoyed.”
Things grew from there. Ron went to a typical high school, which had an average music program, which was more band oriented than orchestral. He sang in the choir and participated in musicals. The music theory teacher was proficient and helpful in moving him along. After graduation, he auditioned for the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He got in and spent the next six years there.
“I knew I had to be somewhere, in a conservatory or something,” he said. “Since I was a little child, I was absolutely enthralled with any kind of music, always intrigued, and here I was living in Boston, this incredible place.”
Ron was a college student in America while a controversial war raged over in Vietnam. Being a center for protest and conflict, Boston was a hot bed for anguish and action.
“MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was very involved with the Dow Chemical Company, which made napalm for the war,” he said. “We did protests there. I had some tear gas thrown at me, that’s for sure. There were a lot of riots. It was an incredible time to be alive and young.”
Once, while rehearsing with Boston Symphony in Lenox (Western Massachusetts), Ron came out of rehearsal and saw a group of hippies gathered nearby. They looked a little bewildered. He asked them where they had been.
“This guy says ‘Jimi Hendrix just played the national anthem’,” he said. “They were coming back from Woodstock, so I suppose I was there in spirit.”
In 1976, Rachel relocated to the United States to further explore not only her budding career in art but her world as well. She bounced around parts of Hawaii, California, and Florida. And yet, the only common denominator seemed to be this mysterious man she kept seeing. It was Ron. Though she knew of him, she didn’t know him personally, even thought they shared mutual friends.
“We saw each other at a health food store in Malibu,” she said. “We both were with somebody else at the time. We weren’t really introduced or anything, but we had these yearning crushes on each other.”
Finally, at a Yacht Club in Malibu, Rachel saw Ron performing and knew she had to make a move. It was 1979, the two were now single and the stars had aligned.
“I saw him playing cello and just thought he was so beautiful,” she said. “Something got us together because we’re supposed to be together.”
The two were on the same path of discovery. They headed for Miami, Fla., where Rachel owned and operated an art gallery with her works, and Ron served as the assistant conductor for the Miami Beach Community Orchestra. Though life was going well, it was also going very fast. Children soon came into the picture—three to be exact. Music and art commitments were filling the calendar. The machine was running on all cylinders, but both knew they couldn’t keep that pace.
“You find yourself on autopilot,” Ron said. “And you think, ‘Do I want to do this for the rest of my life?’”
On a chance visit to see friends in Cashiers, N.C., the couple fell in love with the grandeur and beauty of southern Appalachia.
“I was struck by it, by the plants and the herbs,” Rachel said. “I’d lived in California, Denver, Miami, but I hadn’t experienced American like it is here. It’s like Europe with the changing of the seasons, and I was longing for that.”
And thus it was decided. They packed up everything, said goodbye to south Florida and headed for Western North Carolina, where they soon began to plant roots on a three-acre piece of paradise. Sitting at the base of Pinnacle Knob, a 4,500-foot high mountain, the main house was built 12 years ago. The idea behind it was to pair the natural beauty of the landscape with the philosophy of “reduce, reuse and recycle.”
“It’s about sustainable living and respecting nature,” Ron said. “Instead of abusing nature and using it as a commodity, see it as a gift. As far as I’m concerned, this is a sacred area.”
Ron was releasing independent albums, producing musical scores for documentaries and conducting for the Blue Ridge Orchestra and University of North Carolina at Asheville Chamber Orchestra. Rachel was displaying her artwork in regional galleries, selling numerous pieces and pushing her name further across the country.
In a world of differences, variety and sometimes confusion, the universal language of love, music and nature flows effortlessly through their property. Some of that is by chance, by a place that was already magical before the couple arrived, but most is by the hard work and nurturing care each had instilled into the ground and out into the world.
“You realize that inside we’re all the same, no matter our origin or skin color, that the heart, the light within all of us, is a special gift because we’re alive,” Ron said. “Art, music and consciousness are a feeling, a vibration. There is a feeling here that was what the 1960s focused on, which is change and evolution of consciousness. We’ve all got to work together.”
With the construction of a cottage finished this past spring, people from all walks of life can experience the wonder and mystique Ron and Rachel have felt since the first day they stepped foot on the land.
“People have said this is heaven on earth, and there’s an energy here,” Ron said. “Nature, music and art are all part of the healing arts. Even though we can be having problems, any type of problem, there’s still a hope that those things and meditation can show a way to take our senses and turn them inward.”
For the last four years, the couple has held a fundraiser in June for “Food for People,” a nonprofit organization (part of The Prem Rawat Foundation) that provides disaster relief, medical clinics, and food for some of the poorest places in the world, including Nepal, India and Africa. This past year, they raised more than $10,000. Attendees were treated to live music, an elaborate dinner and auction, in which 100 percent of the profits went to the charity.
“If you want to be rich, be generous, and I feel so rich,” Rachel added. “We’re just an artist and a musician. We’re not famous, but this place shows you a person with the right intentions can go and do great things.”
Since the cottage has been unveiled, there have already been plenty of guests, ranging from artists to older couples to young families with children. They’re not only introduced to the property, but also Sparkie, the dog, Princess, the Shetland pony, and Hakima, the Arabian mare. Each guest has his or her own story, each exposed to the love and kindness this land and its protectors possess.
“I feel so grateful that we’ve got the cottage and people have the opportunity to come here,” Rachel said. “They bring their darling kids, and I just adore the little ones.”
Ron mentions one guest in particular. It was a couple. They were going to spend the weekend in the cottage and the boyfriend seems quite perturbed and worn down when he arrived. By the end of their stay, the fellow was completely transformed, heading back into society refreshed and with a smile on his face.
“There’s the good and the bad, the ying and yang of life,” Ron said. “But, we have the option to be ourselves and true to ourselves. You have to be yourself, to manifest or speak up and deal with situations, hopefully with love and diplomacy.”
As Rachel walks through the garden plot, the pony and mare nibble on some grass. Sparkie darts around, nudging Rachael and sticking his nose into whatever business he can find. The sun ducks behind Pinnacle Knob. The air is crisp. A dog barks in the distance. Night will soon fall on another day in paradise.
“You start to feel the love pulling your breath in and out,” she said. “While we’re here and alive, when we go within, we experience this wonderful feeling. It’s so peaceful and nurturing and we’re carrying it inside of us. That’s heaven.”
The road gets bigger and bigger leaving Ron and Rachel Clearfield’s home. It’s a wide world out there—one that starts from the smallest of places, inside of you, and opens up into the vastness of possibility and chance once you begin the journey.
“You don’t have to be like anybody else, just be yourself,” Ron said. “We’re one of a kind. There will never be another one like you and their will never be another one like me, so let’s own it.”