Kory's Hindman Experience

Home for a writer's soul.

"This tiny region called Hindman will do more than occupy my mind and heart. It will be the place where my soul laughs and cries and lives, really lives, with its sisters and brothers. It will be the place my soul calls home."

 - Kory Wells

Home

I walked this path to and from my dorm several times each day. Each morning was foggy.

This is a view of the May Stone building as I came down the hill from my dorm. This building holds the dining hall and a large meeting room that is decorated with handmade quilts. This is where the readings took place. 

Classes were conducted in the James Still building, reached by crossing this foot bridge over Troublesome Creek.

Gracious hostesses Anne and Leanne. Anne is polishing a novel and Leanne writes about her family in south Alabama.

If you aren't looking carefully, you can almost miss the entry drive to the Hindman Settlement School. There is a sign marking the entrance, but the drive is narrow and slopes immediately downward to a one lane bridge that crosses Troublesome Creek. It is not a place you would arrive at accidentally.

I first edged onto that bridge on Sunday afternoon, about an hour before suppertime. This was undoubtedly the place, but the pictures on the Hindman website had not prepared me for the layout of the land. The modest Hindman campus is snuggled into the kudzu-covered contours of a small mountain. Actually, I debated all week if it was a big hill or a small mountain. But as my abode for the week was in a dorm-style house not far from the top, where it was more practical to walk than drive, I decided, huffing and puffing, that it was indeed a mountain.

My accommodations were...adequate. Just barely. I shared a two level "efficiency" with Melva Sue Priddy and Renee Lyons. I never did decide exactly how many women were in our house...I think fourteen or fifteen, maybe twenty. Four showers, four sinks, two toilet stalls with shower curtains for privacy. Sulfur water. Think "church camp" and you've probably got the right image. Except there was no curfew and our house was the party house, I was quickly informed. Although the partiers pretty much kept to the porch, they were a consistent source of muffled noise - and temptation - until the wee hours of the morning. The one thing I did not get at Hindman was sleep.

But I got encouragement, and that's greatly more beneficial than sleep, at least up to a point. My encouragement began on that first night when Jane Hicks, Darnell's friend and the Cosmic Possum, found me, told me to sign up to read and to wash dishes, and then took me to meet Silas House. He was just standing there in the May Stone building, talking with friends and waiting for supper like everyone else. This illustrates the egalitarian society at Hindman, and the accessibility to the authors. Silas said, "I really liked your story." I thanked him and floated on in to supper.

The food at Hindman makes up for the accommodations. It is plain food, served buffet style from huge bowls and platters. One night, for example, we had beans and cornbread and potatoes and greens for supper. Breakfasts were usually bacon or sausage with eggs or pancakes, etc. Betty Smith, herself practically an institution at Hindman, would lead the hundred or so people in a song-prayer before breakfast and supper. Sometimes we sung in rounds. All participants had to help wash dishes at two meals during their stay. This in itself was quite interesting, as I had no prior commercial kitchen experience.

The dining room is large, filled with tables that must seat eight to ten or more. I tried to eat with different people quite a bit. My most famous dining partner was undoubtedly Robert Morgan, who I and my tablemates grilled on the current trends in Appalachian literature. He is quite a scholar. I especially enjoyed talking with poet Jeff Daniel Marion over breakfast one morning...his reading the night before was wonderful.

 Among those less published, I made many friends, including Anne Ott and Leanne Pate. These two were rooming together at the hotel in Hindman, which is owned by the school. "I'd like to see that," I told them, and so they graciously invited me over after lunch that day. I went to their room, chatted for a while about writing and families and such, and then a huge thunderstorm hit. Rain pelted the window air conditioner and thunder boomed loud through the floor above us. There was no way I could walk the distance back to my room, even if I had an umbrella, which I did not. "You'll just have to stay," they said. "You look sleepy," Anne added. I admitted I was, and at their urging, laid down and took a nap right then and there! How often can a person go home with strangers and do such a thing? I told someone else about it later, and she said simply, "That's Hindman for you."