This Digital Potlatch section is a little different: just two of the items below are original source material, but the others are thematically related. In 1971 I quit my college teaching job and went “back to the land” in the Arkansas Ozarks with a few of my friends. We bought 170 acres of woods and waterfalls for just 10 grand and thought we’d died and gone to heaven. The adventure lasted less than a year but shaped my life forever.
You can learn something of this from these posts, but otherwise, you’ll have to wait for the book. There actually is half of one already [see banner above] that I was selling by subscription 10 years ago. I had to stop—life intervened—and hope to finish it someday if I have the nerve. Though just a small part of the saga, the sex and dope alone (in good ole Austin) are surely worth it, even if most of that took place before moving to the woods, where there was precious little of either. The truth is, communal life was much more innocent than most of you would think! – JHF
It’s been a long time since I contributed a piece to the Digital Potlatch. But I was searching for material about Yellowhammer Farm and rediscovered this post from 2007 I’d like to share. Here you go, and every word is true. This may end up in a book some day, but you can read it [...]
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Maybe if I got out more, I could tell you who the other people were. I recognized one, Mike Reynolds (the earthship guy), then Dennis and the entourage moved on to the front room of the restaurant. I’d seen the man in movies all my life and knew he was dying, and there he was, passing 20 feet away.
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So here I am this Easter morning, having experienced a resurrection of my own these last few days. It’s not the where, but just (?) the “what,” spending every waking moment loving who I am and finally letting go of all the rest. Again and again, however many times it takes until I check out and move on. I’m dropping out to spend the rest of my life on permanent summer vacation–do you remember how that felt, the first time, walking home from school?
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On our walking route, I sometimes passed by a field of ripening oats or wheat, I never knew which. But more than once, I felt as if the crop was conscious. I kid you not. I felt the spirit of the grain. I was aware of something we don’t have words for, you might say. I am in this respect a raving mystic, I suppose, and I swear to God I’m not making this up.
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There was room for my portable typewriter, a few books, and a kerosene lamp, which delighted me no end. My bed, a metal army cot with a thin cotton pad for a mattress, was opposite the fireplace against the wall. I had room for everything I owned, which wasn’t much, a well not ten feet from my door, and I was happy. I even had a place to pee.
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My God! I was frozen in place. The warm, still summer night was charged with absolute terror, at least for me, hiding behind a tree. All I could do was watch as what was now obviously a police car of some sort slowly approached a lane that would bring it right into the clearing in front of my tent. Suddenly I had a stupidly happy thought: maybe it was just the sheriff, checking up on us. He’d been around once before and seemed friendly enough, if a bit suspicious. Please God, let it be the sheriff, I thought. The car was almost at the lane! As it passed through a patch of moonlight just below me I could clearly see the big — blue — PLYMOUTH! An Arkansas state trooper!
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Weird times, brothers and sisters. They poured trillions of dollars into a hole and nothing happened. We’re still burning the rain forests. Planetary alignments are getting downright spooky. Everybody knows it can’t go on, yet here we are and this we do. Why trust anything except your heart? Something led me to unearth a half-finished [...]
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The year was possibly 1973 or ’74. It hardly matters, though. My lady friend and I were spending the night in a cheap motel in Fayetteville, Arkansas. We’d driven up from Austin to look at some land I was part owner of (supposedly), possibly to have one last look before I decided whether to sell [...]
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I may never have been so alive. We ate good food: rice, eggs, apples, wild persimmons, turnips, and squash, and virtually no meat. There were chickens running loose in the woods and a couple of milk goats – I used to call one over to give my coffee a squirt, right into the cup. We all sat naked in the creek together and lathered up to bathe. I spent day after day exploring in the woods and mountains. Eventually the others (except one) all straggled back to civilization, but I stayed in my 8 x 16 foot shack all alone well into the winter.
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But... Not ever. Not even...
How we got here. $2.99. Click cover for details. Sample chapters here. Amazon Kindle
, paperback.
Stories of life in El Norte. $2.99. Click cover for info & free sample. Amazon Kindle
, Apple iBooks, Smashwords, PDF.
Click cover to download FREE PDF sampler w/8 chapters from above two books. (Kindle version,$0.99)
John Hamilton Farr is the author of Buffalo Lights and Taos Soul. (More info here »)
Email: jhfarr@newmex.com
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