Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society

by Harlan Hubbard

Nonfiction. Harlan Hubbard's PAYNE HOLLOW: LIFE ON THE FRINGE OF SOCIETY provides an account of a self-made alternative lifestyle in early 1950's America. Anna and Harlan Hubbard, refusing to adopt the industrial positioning provided, built a simple home at Payne Hollow and documented their "basic relationship of need to fulfillment within the carefully circumscribed wholeness of [their] honest, sensitive, extraordinary lives"--Edward Lueders. PAYNE HOLLOW creates its own self-referential world written as "a painter's prose" that fills its environment with a Thoreau-esque "ecstasy...expressed with sober simplicity"--The Louisville Courier-Journal.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Spirituality

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Craig]

Very interesting book that made me comfortable with my own thoughts and viewpoints. I like to think that many of the driving principles of Harlan Hubbard are not too far from my own (though I would never compare myself on any profound level to such a great man). It was of comfort to know that men like him have existed in the modern era. This book discusses, very simply, the life of Hubbard and his wife, who remove themselves from society to live a subsistence life far from the hustle, bustle and plagues of modernity. One thing that stuck out for me was his discussion of noise and just how much noise there is in cities or in any overly developed area. He doesn't even use machines to farm and one of his principle reasons is that "they just produce too much racket." Truth.

[Emily Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The intimacy and gentleness of life told by the Hubbards was heightened by the hours I spent working at Payne Hollow with AmeriCorps; this book was a gorgeous supplement to my time in this special place.

[Jim Minick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living life as a quiet protest.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely reflection from a man who has built a life resisting aspects of modernism. Will make you want to buy goats, start a garden, and live by the water.

[Charlotte Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this book for one of my classes and it is not something I would normally pick to read, but it was actually an easy enjoyable read. Focused on living as one with nature and had a heart warming love story!

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic story of a real life. Of a couple that eschews urban life and the technological advances of modern man, and makes their living the old-fashioned way--off the land. They live off the land entirely, completely. Season in, season out, they use the river, their forests and open spaces, their garden and rotating herd of goats, to sustain themselves. They build from it, eat from it, sing and dance on it, thrive from it. The earth provides everything they need, and they are real homesteaders.

Harlan's words are invigorating. His tangents are enlightening, even inspiring. Reading this simple yet poetic book helped reopen my own eyes, once again, to the many things I *want* to be doing better, and can. I love his drawings and want to sketch more. His handyman skills--he can do anything. The couple's gardening prowess is unmatched--I want my own garden to thrive bigger and better this year than ever.

Harland Hubbard's journal of life at Payne Hollow is a beautiful, must-read account that may take you back a decade or century or two, and inspire you to harken back to the older, tried and true ways of human life on earth.

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Some of Harlan Hubbard's variegated tidbits of wisdom:

"One forgets, even in a brief interval indoors, what it is like outside in the life-giving winter air. You must rise to meet it. You are inspired by earth and sky, seen so many times, yet ever new and unknown." (80)

"I rejoiced that I could live so completely in nature." (81)

"one cannot cling to what is past. The present moment is too urgent." (98)

"The gardener harvests much that was never planted." (108)

"Should not all who eat meat be willing to do their own butchering? If the eating of meat has so much against it, perhaps it should be given over entirely." (127)

"The old-timers are children of the soil. As each one passes away, an empty space is left which will not be filled by the rising generation, formed under urban influences." (134)

"I yearn for the wild, I lean toward its absolute solitude, I long to ascend the river to its headwaters in forested mountains, to flow with it down to the sea, the ultimate wilderness." (166)

[Sid Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harlan Hubbard understood early on that there was a price to be paid for a rapidly mechanizing society, both to the environment and in terms of personal freedom and fulfillment. He and his wife Anna determined that the price was too high, and chose instead a self-sufficient lifestyle along the lines of Helen and Scott Nearing, or the one experimented with by Thoreau. Payne Hollow tells part of their story, their way of life and interaction with the small community nearby. Theirs is a story of a life well lived, according to one's own values, while in harmony with the community, the world at large, and nature. The book is well written and soul soothing for anyone with an affinity for the simple life lived close to nature.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazingly beautiful book. Harlan Hubbard had a lifelong wish to live intimately with the land and the river, in self-sufficiency and as simply as possible. In his 40's, with his new wife, Anna, he was able to do this, first on a shantyboat on the Ohio River and then in a simple dwelling he built on the riverbank. This book tells the reader how they built and lived this life and has become a bible for those wishing to follow in their footsteps. The couple died in the late 1980s and I wonder if there still exists land this remote and untainted by modern life in order to live like this any more. If nothing else, it gives pause for thought and reflection of the lives we choose for ourselves.

[Mick Parsons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this in tandem with the Payne Hollow journals, mainly to get a sense of how Hubbard distilled this from his journals. Hubbard is an amazing source for river history, and especially shantyboat history. His art is great as well. He is a great resource for anyone looking to make an art out of living.

[Amy Beatty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it! Maybe more of a 4 1/2 star rating. I dream of a life or a season in my life to be just like this. In nature, apart of the river and wind. Fully aware and living off the land. Being enriched by the sunlight in spring just like the rest of nature.

[Laurabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful look on life.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Walden story that spans forty years. A short tale of a long history of living close to nature and appreciating the stillness and fullness that it can offer the spirit.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anna and Harlan Hubbard gave this book to my parents in October 1974 on one of our visits there.
Each time I read this gem, written as a meditation on their daily life, I come away with a deeper respect for how they lived their lives and how their closeness to the earth and to one another influenced every part of their lives, and most especially, their thoughts. They do not view curious visitors as intruders, but as fellow travelers.
Harlan’s writing is both simple and elegant, as their life was. Here’s a sample from page 152, written about those who visit Payne Hollow:
“A subconscious longing seldom put into words comes out in such expressions as, ‘These days everyone is in too much of a hurry. Wish we could get out of the rat race and have a place like yours.’ They do not really wish anything of the kind. This world of today is too beguiling, too comfortable, too exciting. It offers protection and acceptance. Yet the inward doubt and desire, though too feeble to be effective, are hidden in the minds of many, and perhaps they come here to see if there really could be an escape into a way that is less complex and more natural than the one to which they hopelessly resign themselves.”

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third of Harlan Hubbard's books and talks about their lives living in a secluded valley off the Ohio River in Trimble County, KY, across the river from Madison, IN. He writes of his and Anna's transition from shantyboating and their return to Payne Hollow, somewhere where they had spent a summer in their trip down the Ohio in their shantyboat. Now, they returned to this spot for the remainder of their adult lives. Harlan seems to have been a very practical man and most of his writing is on the practicalities of building their home there, off the grid. Now and then, he brings out his philosophy of why they chose to live this way. An enjoyable and quiet read.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really charming book about the Hubbards building their homestead. Some of the railing against modern culture (in the 1960s...I wonder what they would say about today?) comes across as a bit supercilious. I would like to read Hubbard's other book as well.

[Nicole Northrup · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely book about a man and his wife who decided to choose simplicity over "progress."

[Brian]

I have seen this book tagged as a sort of modern-day version of Thoreau’s Walden, only more “hard core” since Hubbard lived with nature for a few decades rather than just a few years. But personally I think the book is less about living apart from the modern world, and more about coming to terms with it. Or, at least, its equally about both.

Much like how they made a transition from being “shanty boaters”, where the river is the center of their world from which everything else is viewed, to living in a house on land beside the river, the Hubbard's way of living in Payne Hollow is a settled compromise between the wild living with "more bark on it" (which they supposed the "radical" students who visited them preferred) and urban living with all of its technological comforts and their concomitant annoyances. Harlan proudly talks about his hand tools and the time they allow him to spend doing what he enjoys, and he compares this with "old Newt" and his preference for a chainsaw (and disdain for those who don't share that preference). Harlan tried using an inboard motor on his boat, so that the visitors who showed up on the opposite bank of the river wouldn’t feel bad being rowed back and forth by their host, but he couldn’t stand the noise and the artlessness of it. So he switched back to oars, and kept a spare set in the boat for guilty-feeling visitors. Probably my favorite lines in the book are on page 109. They are my favorite because they echo my own feelings about power tools, specifically, but also about the incessant trend of putting a cord on everything:

I have found no one who sympathizes with my insistence on gardening by hand, without the use of any machine…They get the work done you say? I say they are expensive and insidiously destructive. I will get the work done in my own way. Save time? The best use of time is to enjoy it, as I do when working in peaceful silence.

The best use of time is to enjoy it. Perhaps that is why, as we learn on page 118, that the Hubbard’s own a car which they keep parked on the other side of the river for the 10 mile trip to town where they buy store-bought goods. He even admits that “through the years a liking for the town has grown within us”.

Although I doubt it was the author’s intention, early in the book (pg. 12-13) he describes a snowed-over Payne Hollow in a way that could be a metaphor for this idea of “coming to terms”:

The river has fallen to its lowest stage because so many of its sources are frozen. I am able to walk out on the ice which has been stranded on the rock bar at the mouth of the creek, and from its outermost point survey the ice-choked river, upstream to Plowhandle Point and the wide bend beyond, downstream to Saluda Creek and Marble Hill. The whole reach is an arctic expanse. In the whiteness of snow and ice the formal divisions are lost, the river and hills are merged into one element.

The river and the land, once starkly different things to the shanty-boating Hubbards, are now “merged into one”. It’s a distinction that became blurred only once they had the advantage of living on both sides. In that sense, it’s a mature, compromised position of people with depths of life experience.

[JD Waggy · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you like outdoorsy narratives, this is the book for you. I do not, so this was not. Hubbard describes his first years with his wife Anna in their self-built cabin on the banks of the Ohio River. Because it is a journal, there is no overarching narrative (other than the passage of time and the lessons learned due to it) and no real action. Hubbard's musings are slightly more three-dimensional than in his first book, "Shantyboat," but still rather shallow and focused on external things. His descriptions of the beauty of stillness and appreciating the natural world around you are lovely, though.

[Melanie Ullrich · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very nice look into how a couple made a idyllic life for themselves living off the land and seeming to enjoy every minute off it. The most interesting point of this book was that they were living this lifestyle in the 50s! I just cannot imagine other people being so kind and understanding to them as they were in such a conservative era. This fact might be why Harlan, at times, came off more than a little grumpy or jaded. Although I really had to trudge through a lot of this book, I savored the parts about their time drifting down south on a shantyboat and the times that Harlan talked so lovingly about his garden.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harlan and Anna Hubbard, after years living "off the grid" on a shanty boat, continued to do so on the banks of the Ohio River in Payne Hollow, Kentucky, where they built their own house, lived with few amenities, and survived by their own hard work. This little book gives the reader a lot of food for thought about freedom and independence and what it means to be one's own person. Hubbard's bucolic sketches are scattered throughout the book and offer a sense of what their unique life must have been like. Thoreau's short time in the woods at Walden Pond is nothing compared to the lifetime that these two spent living off the land.

[Terry Diggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my kind of book. In the tradition of Thoreau's Walden, it is the story of a couple who chose, and perfected the simple life in a small plot of land along the Ohio River in Kentucky, after spending several years living in a homemade houseboat ("shantyboat," also the title of another book by Hubbard) and slowly traveling down the Ohio to the Mississippi, then on to New Orleans.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read about Harlan's life living on a shanty-boat and then along the river's edge of the Ohio River (I think). Good little vignettes. An engaging read. Read it on the flight out to Arkansas.

[=====D · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book ever written. Really and truly.

Also, the best life ever lived, as attested to by Wendell Berry's biography.

http://books.google.com/books/about/H...

[Bob Peru · Rating 5 out of 5]

harlan hubbard is a gentler and less doctrinaire scott nearing.
both men (and their wives).
heroes.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better and more real than Thoreau. I appreciated how Harlan and Anna found grace in the mechanized life they lived to avoid. A genuinely human account.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Need a button for books you re-read.... A favorite book, an antidote to much the wears on me, and while I always come up short with Harlan's yardstick it's good to be reminded there is such a stick.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting little journal about a successful homestead.

[ANDY CLARK]

mid-century living off-grid way of life, of course pre-internet and pre-cell phone too,