Payne Hollow Journal

Harlan Hubbard was Kentucky's Thoreau, and his journals are intimate records of a life lived in harmony with nature. For more than fifty years the artist, writer, and homesteader described daily activities and keen observations as he sought to live simply and authentically. The third and climactic volume of his journals, Payne Hollow Journal contains entries from 1951 to 1986: the years he and his wife, Anna, lived at their Payne Hollow retreat along the Ohio River's Kentucky shore. By turns poetic and practical, Payne Hollow Journal celebrates nature's intense beauty and sometimes harsh realities as perhaps only an artist can see them. Here Harlan also shows how dedication to work that provides sustenance - gardening, wood chopping, fishing, foraging, and raising goats - can also be fulfilling. Don Wallis's season by season arrangement of the Payne Hollow entries reflects the seasonal changes in Harlan and his life as well as in the natural world around him. At the beginning of this volume Harlan Hubbard writes, "When we are away from Payne Hollow, that place does not seem real or possible.... It is hard to explain our situation, to give reasons for our living this way to people who have no understanding or sympathy". But a visit to the Hubbards' home through the Payne Hollow Journal is ample explanation for anyone who has ever yearned to lead a life of simplicity and purpose.