There were red-eyed vireos and wood thrushes trilling, with the occasional exclamation point of a red-bellied woodpecker’s rolling tchur. But those weren’t the only voices to be heard. I worked my way downslope, moving through younger pines and then through older oaks and poplars and beech trees. Through the thick timber, I could discern the outlines of what used to be: Corroded tin roofing. Rusty barbed wire around a long-vacant hog pen. A lone chimney rising above the detritus of a long-fallen farmhouse.

They all had a song to sing, too, but you had to tune your heart to hear it.

I was on a walk through the woods of a singular piece of ground. Over the past 10 years, in an effort to preserve water quality in Falls Lake — as well as open lands, oxygen-producing forests, and places for wildlife to thrive — Triangle Land Conservancy has patched together a trove of forest and creek in the middle of one of the fastest-growing municipal regions on the planet. North of Raleigh and southwest of Wake Forest, straddling the line between Wake and Granville counties, some 350 acres have remained astonishingly undeveloped.

Places like The Harricanes are in increasingly short supply. And increasingly valuable for man and beast.

This is a place where, long ago, cotton and corn took a meager foothold in the rough, rocky ground, but moonshine didn’t seem to face much challenge. It anchors a broader region called The Harricanes, or The Hurricans or Hairicans, depending on who is doing the calling. It was named, the story goes, for a devastating storm that long ago twisted its trees and wound its residents — the Richards and Keiths and Rays and Harrisons and Grissoms and Powells and other longtime families there — even deeper into the big woods and thin ground.

Now, of course, land anywhere near the Triangle region can grow houses better than most any other crop, so places like The Harricanes — a little overlooked, a little forgotten — are in increasingly short supply. And increasingly valuable for both man and beast.

• • •

I follow Leigh Ann Hammerbacher, who twirls a snapped-off oak twig to clear our way of spiderwebs. Hammerbacher works for Triangle Land Conservancy, and she’s been riding the roller coaster of what’s going to happen with this rare piece of green space. She watched as the land was put on the market and taken off the market. There were big plans and no plans and medium-size plans. And then, miraculously, TLC had the right plan. Its acquisition will connect with a larger 250-acre TLC parcel that, together with 200 acres of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land, will protect the watershed of an important part of Falls Lake. It will give deer and turkeys and warblers and foxes a place to live in peace.

Hammerbacher and I sidle up to the remains of an old house. With one eye wide open for copperheads, I step onto the wrack of log timbers and twisted tin and shattered glass. I stand quietly for a moment. Sometimes, when you’re listening for lost voices, you first have to use your eyes.

In her role at Triangle Land Conservancy, Leigh Ann Hammerbacher helps protect natural areas like The Harricanes. photograph by Charles Harris

A pair of old wooden chairs protrudes from the forest floor like masts from a sunken ship.

Who sat there?

There are rusted box spring frames, the concentric coils snaggled with blackberry and privet.

Who slept there?

Mason jars and an old blown-glass lantern globe.

Who took time for a meal in this home? What did the lantern’s light illuminate so long ago? A child’s spelling homework? A sheaf of bills that furrowed an old farmer’s brow?

Nearby, a dry-stacked chimney rises above the ruins like a Stonehenge obelisk. Its bleached rocks are swaddled in vine. It wears a forlorn expression. Many years have passed since it warmed a home. But at its base, where some family once gathered by the glow of a fire, I find the entrance to a fox den, a tunnel leading deep under the chimney.

Home, again.

On our way back to the car, Hammerbacher stops suddenly at a jumble of large boulders, mossy and spackled with lichen. “Look here,” she says. “Resurrection fern growing in the rocks. You don’t see that very often.”

No, you do not. Resurrection fern is an epiphyte, which gathers its required nutrients from the air, not the soil. It’s far more common to find it clinging to the boles and branches of an old tree. Not a rock. Not a boulder in The Harricanes. In dry weather, resurrection fern turns gray and papery; it withers into something that looks like a sad little piece of lost hope.

A lone chimney hints at the human stories hidden deep in the woods. photograph by Charles Harris

But the briefest shower brings resurrection fern to life. In a matter of hours, its fronds unfurl, impossibly green, impossibly alive. One moment, it is shriveled, easy to overlook, forgotten. The next, it’s alive and vibrant.

The TLC tracts of the old and new and future Harricanes are about a square mile. Caught between growing Raleigh, exploding Wake Forest, and coming-on-strong Granville County, it’s a highly prized piece of ground. Six hundred acres here is worth — what, $10 million? $60 million? More? You could build homes and schools and shops and offices. It could be worth a fortune or three.

Or you could build nothing. If you were savvy enough, forward-thinking enough, you could set it apart because there will never be anything like it anywhere nearby, ever again. You could leave it as a place where the old roads will forever wind past the old ruins, and the calls of birds will never cease their chorus through the old woods. You could build nothing, and then it would be priceless.

The Harricanes area is not yet open to the public. For more information and details about upcoming events, visit triangleland.org.