It’s the kind of place where fun is the big attraction. Where people of all ages mingle in a back-to-nature environment meant for fishing poles, community parties and wading in the creek. No wonder North Carolina’s Preserve at Wolf Laurel is drawing devotees dedicated to the simple life. By Marla Hardee Milling • Photography by Steven McBride
On a crisp autumn night, Willis Williams lifts the lid of a cast-iron pot and pours in a batch of Brunswick stew he prepared the previous evening. As the mixture heats on a portable stove attached to his pickup truck, a crowd begins to form in the massive timber-framed covered pavilion behind him.
Dressed in shorts, hiking boots, fleece vest and ball cap, the 49-year-old Williams seems right at home in the mountains, though he was born in Arkansas, raised in Europe and Florida and keeps his primary residence in Connecticut with his wife and three children. And while his home office is in Manhattan, he spends about half his time in North Carolina, where he is the developer of a private, gated mountaintop community 27 miles north of Asheville called The Preserve at Wolf Laurel.
“My family fell in love with it,” says Williams. “My wife, who is a fifth-generation Floridian, said she didn’t care if we ever go back to Florida after seeing the beauty here. We have seven-year-old twins – a boy and a girl – and a daughter who’s 12. They stomp in the creek and chase fireflies. They do all the things I did as a kid.
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