Title: Markham Hill - Big Nature, Big Love
                   by Pritam Chowdhury

I experienced the gift of living on Markham Hill in the early 2000s. Maria, my good friend and coworker at the Coop (Ozark Natural Foods) in Fayetteville, lived up there in a cute cabin way back in the woods on the left, on the other side of the big meadow. It was a one room cabin from a former Hilltop summer camp run by Mrs. Markham from 1921-1945. A tiny house, well before tiny houses were cool. Outhouse. Compost pile. Wood stove. Fire pit. Garden out the front door. Dense trees and quiet 360 degrees around you. But minutes from town.

I had hung out on the Hill a number of times while I was in school at the University of Arkansas. When a cabin opened up, Maria urged me to become her neighbor. I worked at the Coop part time and later full time while in graduate school in the Anthropology Department. I would do archeological fieldwork on my spring and summer breaks and work at the Coop during the semesters. I became ‘a local'. At the Coop, I worked at various points as a cashier, front end supervisor, manager on duty, scanning coordinator and supplements buyer. In 2002, I had recently finished writing and defending my thesis and had spent extended periods of time glued to the computer. This was before everyone had a cell phone, digital cameras were just becoming a thing, and smart phones were still the stuff of Star Trek. But I was really an outdoor lover and fate in my academic and work environments had me feeling like I had become a modern-day cyborg, too long attached to my desk. To solve this, immersing myself in nature and community on Markham Hill was just what I needed.

That summer my fuzzy golden cat Suri Del Gato and I packed up and left ‘the Alamo’, the apartment I lived in on Lafayette Street, and moved to Markham Hill. We abandoned living between Old Main and Dickson Street to become wood splitting, water hauling, guitar picking, near-town hillbillies. I was moving into a cabin that local musician and chef Mike Bewley was moving out of, as he was moving into the old Ward Pennington house. James lived in the cabin next door to me, over on the ‘guys side’ of the Hill. Our friends Maria, Samantha, and Stephanie lived in the pool cabins on the ‘gals side’. There was no intentional gender division, it just balanced out that way at the time. We were all good friends and hung out often. Devron lived in the red cabin near the front of the field. The indomitable Mr. Winston was the caretaker and he and his family lived in the Big House up front. Later, Rachel and Dave were the caretakers, and Jen moved into the twin cabins near Julian and Jane Archer’s home.

The Hill was filled with creative people from many backgrounds and walks of life. Spontaneous musical jams often included a mixture of talented regional and local band members, assembling around a campfire with a bottle or two of red wine. Being so deep in nature yet so close to town was amazing. That first summer was magic. My cabin was the old log cabin (former Ward Pennington barn) that was nearest what locals call Mossy Rock Cave. In our era, the folks on the Hill called it Goddess Cave and the massive break-off boulder on the nearby talus was called God Rock. I don’t know the origins of those names or if anyone still uses them. Regardless of the name, that place had long been sacred.

Before I moved into my cabin, I had a month of overlap with my old apartment. So, some of my friends and I used that time to refresh and renew the cabin to make it mine. My good friend and colleague at the Coop William Beaver, an experienced woodsman and homesteader, taught me a ton about carpentry and cabin dwelling that month. We worked on the outside and inside of the structure. While gutting the insulation below the cedar shakes on the inside ceiling we found a couple of snake skins over 6 feet long! I soon realized that I had an old king snake neighbor (or roommate) who mostly lived near my compost pile and diligently ate any rodents trying to climb around in the walls. Fortunately for me, I’m not very squeamish and I thought this was pretty awesome.

It was summertime and the cold winter seemed far away. My cabin had tall ceilings and cement floors and a good crossflow of air, so it stayed very cool throughout the hotter seasons. In the winter I found that the cabin would stay warm but it took lots of effort and mountains of firewood to keep it comfy. I would crawl down from my loft and feed the stove four or five hours into the night. My cabin had electricity but no running water. I had an outhouse about a 30 second walk away.  I would haul water from the top of the field quite a ways back to my cabin. Every day after work, I would carry a 1-gallon jug home in each hand but would occasionally haul back larger containers of water in a wheelbarrow to stock up. I would bath and take showers outside on a hand laid brick patio when conditions were favorable. That was perfect most months of the year in Arkansas, but not in the winter. It was during this time that I started going to the Yvonne Richardson Center to practice Judo. Maria invited me to do that, too. It was fun to train and bond with friends. The Center was also a good place to take an easy hot shower after practice several times a week. Especially on a dark winter evening when kettle-heated buckets of water seemed less than appealing.

That next spring and summer, Maria and I were hanging out quite a bit. In fact, we were both having dreams that we would walk across the field in the night to meet each other. One morning I woke up, climbed down from my loft, stepped outside, and saw Maria hanging out atop the bluff behind my cabin. I walked back inside, made a second cup of hot green tea, brought it to her, and took a seat. We hung out, sipped and smelled the warm tea, and enjoyed the morning together. Over the years, we would end up spending many moments together and sharing many cups of tea.

Another year passed and our relationship grew, so we decided to consolidate resources. Samantha and I decided to swap cabins so I could have the ‘Pea Pod’ cabin next door to Maria’s place. We could then have all my water hauling, wood splitting, and fire feeding spaced closer together rather than across two cabins on two sides of the field. Not long after that move, we found out that our love decided to manifest a new member of the team. We were going to have a baby! Maria was completing midwifery school at ARMSS (Arkansas Midwives School and Services) with testing for her professional licensure later that year.

That winter we got married and moved off the Hill into a house with a yard, but on the same mountain. When our son Sequoyah was born, we would continue taking him on walks on the trails and visit our human, plant, and animal friends that remained up there. Our love, friendship, and community built outward from a center point on Markham Hill. Our big Love will always be tied to that big Nature.

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Post note: Photo credit for all the pics of my cabin go to Nic Lohanik. He filmed me and my place a few times. Apologies for the image quality. Most of the shots are screen grabs from an old Video Disk that he gave me. These are some of the only images we have from that time.

(Go to Friends of Markham Hill on Facebook to see all the photos.)

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