I never tire of the sweeping view from the back piazza of George Washington’s Mount Vernon — the green lawn sloping toward the milewide Potomac River.
I first saw the view on a spring day more than 50 years ago on my high school senior-class trip. Since then, I have watched my children play on the lawn on a hot July afternoon, sat on the piazza steps in the dusk of a soft October evening during the Virginia Wine Festival and, most recently, took in the view on a sharp, clear November morning.
Thanks to concerted conservation efforts that have preserved the wooded stretch across the river, now a federally protected right of way, the landscape has remained largely untouched since Washington’s time. “It is pretty much the same view Washington saw,” said Melissa Wood, director of media relations for Mount Vernon.
