Wattle Hollow Retreat Center

Wattle Hollow has been a retreat haven for many a seeker:…Buddhist nuns on silent retreat, mothers needing a time-out from kids, artists petitioning the muse for new inspiration, men beginning a new chapter in life, people in grief looking for a deep and quiet sustenance

In 1977, my husband Merlin and I went on “Allah’s Guided Tour a six-month hitchhiking adventure all around Turkey, through Afghanistan and Iran, into the winter snows near Kashmir and finally arrived in Amritsar, the gateway to…For another year, we immersed ourselves in this nonlinear wonderland, tasting Sivananda’s yoga, bhajan, the village life, months of yellow-eyed hepatitis (in Rishikesh), Vipassana meditation with Goenka-ji at Igatpuri, waiting for Satya Sai Baba’s darshan in Puttaparthi… Mostly we wandered along the banks of the Ganges and up in the Himalayas, greeting fellow sadhus of every shade.

Towards the end of our year there, we landed in Auroville, an international community in Pondicherry which is devoted to spiritual service. We were touched with the level of creativity we encountered there and the spirit release. The residents seemed to work hard, yet offered the outcome of their labor to God, regardless of gain or loss. We knew it was time to put down roots somewhere, and to begin tending our own literal and figurative garden. Not in, but somewhere. So in 1979 we returned home, hitchhiking through Khomeini’s Iran, around Afghanistan (a whole ‘other story) to Missoula, Montana.

Fortified with resources on alternative energy and building, we again headed out to find the perfect homestead site. The Ozarks happened to be the first area on our list. I’d never been there, but the land prices listed in Mother Earth News were very intriguing. Merlin got a toothache enroute, so we stopped at a friend’s house in Missouri to find a dentist. Jeannie told me that her neighbor had just mentioned to her that that he might sell his land south of Fayetteville, AR…

We got directions and went right there, bypassing all other leads from our magazines and various friends. I was pulled by some mysterious attraction to this one place. We stayed at Devil’s Den State Park and wandered the nearby mountainside at Wattle Hollow the next day. By the time we got to the corner of two creeks, Wattle and Lee, we knew we were “home”. It had none of the precise specifications on our list. We called the owner Jim Kidd. He said, ” I mentioned to one person, once, that I might sell my land, and you are calling to buy it ?!!” Yupp, we said, and put up a mailbox and a tent that day. Dug a latrine and erected a compost bin the second day. Cut some Locust trees and scraped off the bark for the beginnings of our post and beam home that week… A couple of rookies in the woods. We were astounded by the deafening nighttime chorus of the tree and pond frogs, cicadas, and made a tape to send home to our friends in Montana. Eventually, we got a rototiller through the Star Shopper that Merlin converted into a generator, for electricity.