About

What is Cooter Hollow?
Cooter Hollow began as twenty acres of undeveloped woodland in the remotest region of the cold cold north, accessible only via jeep in the summer, and by foot on the other 52 weeks^* of a year. While it’s often imagined as a fully rendered compound of country respite, right now its an inner sanctum only to the mildly insane or really imaginative. I mean, it’s pretty spartan (and I don’t mean that in the Greek style).

To put it another way, not long ago, we found some land for sale. It was the land we could afford without going into debt, which meant that it was completely undeveloped, basically inaccessible, and hadn’t been touched in a hundred years. We’re doing what we can with it, but goings are slow.

We since upgraded our serfdom to include an additional 13 acres with a modest house.  This land is arable and somewhat more accessible.  But not by much.  We have to-date lost one entire vehicle down the side of the mountain at the new and improved place, whereas the original dwelling has not yet swallowed anything more than an occasional bumper or leaf spring.

Okay, I want to visit! What sort of accommodations are offered at Cooter Hollow?
Cooter Hollow has an array of options to suit your specific needs. Our comfortable twenty acres includes:

• One smallish cramper (for the cramped)
• Two pup tents (for cupola campers)
• Four awfully cozy canvas hammocks, strung lovingly between trees (for shiftless tree hippies)
• Two army-surplus bivouac sacks (not for pussies)
• UPDATE: An actual physical no-bullshit four-walls-and-roofed cabin!
• UPDATE: A supremely cozy tent platform large enough to keep your bourgeois tent off the ground and level!
• UPDATE:  A kind of shitty house, with kind of shitty beds.

What do I need to bring?
Any booze that doesn’t come from a quaint microbrewery within twenty miles of Cooter Hollow is welcome here. If you like that kind of thing, you’re welcome to trade us for something from Belgium or Spain. Or anywhere, really. Anywhere, please.

I suppose you should also bring something to do, or else you’re at the mercy of our shovels and my books. Which wouldn’t be so bad, given that we’ve got exquisite taste in both.

So what are you going to do with the place? Build a McMansion? Ski Lodge? Hippie Commune?
Well, our aim is a little more modest than that. It’d be nice to be less reliant on an untrustworthy world, and to do so, things will be sparse and slim for a while. Stick it out and we’ll see.

Are you a couple of survivalists or something?
Well, not exactly. We’re not back-to-the-land grabbers, we’re not Nearings-style treehippies, and we’re not apocalyptic types (though, erm, you’re welcome to take respite here when the rest of the world heats up, runs out of oil, and anti-corporatists are rounded up and incarcerated). We just want a little control over how we live our lives, which involves living without some basic comforts in order to live how we want. But this is the sort of thing that’s generally more amusing when delivered anecdotally after about three glasses of whiskey.

* I’ve been advised to tell you that this is hyperbolic. And it is. But not by MUCH.