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Geese appear high over us
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
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~ Wendell Berry
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It has come to my attention that the “Payne Hollow” name has quite an interesting history beyond being in the title of the Wendell Berry piece, “Sonata at Payne Hollow.” Mr. Berry was a friend of Harlan Hubbard, Mr. Hubbard and his wife Anna established a home and lifestyle at “Payne Hollow” on the Ohio River in northern Kentucky. Mr. Hubbard is referenced in Wikipedia as follows:
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Harlan Hubbard (January 4, 1900 - January 16, 1988) was an American artist and author who lived a life that Henry David Thoreau only experimented with. Hubbard was born in Bellevue, Kentucky. His father died when Harlan was only seven. Soon thereafter, his mother moved him to New York City to be with his two older brothers who were living there at the time. Hubbard attended Childs High School in the Bronx and received his art education from New York’s National Academy of Design and the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In 1919, he returned with his mother to northern Kentucky and settled in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. One of his brothers, Lucien Hubbard (1888-1971), became a famous Hollywood screenwriter.
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As a young man, Hubbard saw the industrial development in America as a threat to the natural world and he thoroughly rejected consumer culture. In 1929 he started keeping a journal into which he poured his thoughts on society. In 1943, he married Anna Eikenhout (she died May 3, 1986). The following year they built a shantyboat at Brent, Kentucky and traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, ending their journey in the Louisiana bayous in 1951. His book Shantyboat recounts the eight-year journey from Brent to New Orleans. His book Shantyboat in the Bayous, which was published in 1990, completes the story.
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In 1951, Harlan and Anna built a primitive, yet elegant home at Payne Hollow on the shore of the Ohio River in Trimble County, Kentucky. It was there that the Hubbards lived lives that have been described as simultaneously frugal and abundant. To fully understand the Hubbards’ lives and their rejection of modern society, Payne Hollow and Journals, 1929-1944 are essential reading. Author Wendell Berry was a close friend of Hubbard’s and has written and lectured on the Hubbards’ lives.
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Hubbard’s art is largely pastoral and he was accomplished with oils, watercolors, and woodblock printing. The Behringer-Crawford Museum in Covington, Kentucky and the Frankfort Community Public Library (Frankfort, Indiana) have significant collections of his work.
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These connections were graciously brought to my attention by Mr. Don Wallis of Yellow Springs OH. Mr. Wallis wrote “Harlan Hubbard and the River: A Visionary Life.” He speaks of Payne Hollow as a place having “a spiritual beauty and deep presence.”Thank you Mr. Wallis, for providing this interesting background.
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Can I see the buds that are swelling
in the woods on the slopes
on the far side of the valley? I can’t,
of course, nor can I see
the twinleafs and anemones
that are blooming over there
bright-scattered above the dead
leaves. But the swelling buds
and little blossoms make
a new softness in the light
that is visible all the way here.
The trees, the hills that were stark
in the old cold become now
tender, and the light changes.
.Wendell Berry,
from Given
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And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.Wendell Berry -
I see you down there, white-haired
among the green leaves,
picking the ripe raspberries,
and I think, “Forty-two years!”
We are the you and I who were
they whom we remember.Wendell Berry, They -
How fine to have a radio
and beautiful music playing
while I sit at rest in the evening.
How fine to hear through the music
the cries of wild geese on the river.Wendell Berry, Listen!
from: Given
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Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly
leaving nothing out.Wendell Berry, Like Snow -
While the land suffers, automobiles thrive,
Shining as they glide by the dying towns,
The empty fields bare in winter,
The deserted farmhouses, obstacles merely
To an ideal trajectory from everywhere to anywhere.Wendell Berry, The Shining Ones -
We come at last to the dark
and enter in. We are given bodies
newly made out of their absence
from one another in the light
of the ordinary day. We come
to the space between ourselves,
the narrow doorway, and pass through
into the land of the wholly loved.Wendell Berry -
The world of machines is running
Beyond the world of trees
Where only a leaf is turning
In a small high breeze.
.Wendell Berry
(A Timbered Choir)
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A gracious lady came to us
and favored us by receiving
kindly our care of her
at the end of all her days.
.
She was a lady made graceful
beyond what we had known
by the welcome she gave to death,
her guest, whom she made unfearful
.
by her fearlessness, having no further
use for herself as we had known her.Wendell Berry -
The body
is a single creature, whole,
its life is one, never less than one, or more,
so is its world, and so
are two bodies in their love for one another
one. In ignorance of this
we talk ourselves to death.
…Wendell Berry -
…
We travelers, walking to the sun, can’t see
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward
That blessed light that yet to us is dark.
…Wendell Berry -
A bird the size
of a leaf fills
the whole lucid
evening with
his note, and flies.
…Wendell Berry -
There is a place you can go
where you are quiet,
a place of water and the light
.
on the water. Trees are there,
leaves, and the light
on leaves moved by air.
.
Birds, singing, move
among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come
.
to no thought of these,
but they are themselves
your thoughts. There seems to be
.
little to say, less and less.
Here they are. Here you are.
Here as though gone.
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None of us stays, but in the hush
where each leaf in the speech
of leaves is a sufficient syllable
.
the passing light finds out
surpassing freedom of its way.
.Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 1998, VII
(Given)
I discovered a truth that seemed to me a revelation... There seemed to be two universes which I termed the world and the earth, in either of which I could choose to live. Then I saw there was but one, and that I was living on the earth looking directly into infinity. ~ Harlan Hubbard
