A Gift from One River Traveler to Another

Magnetic medal found on a door hinge at Payne Hollow

by Susan Griffin Ward, Community Engagement Director for the Kentucky Waterways Alliance and Payne Hollow on Ohio Board Member.

Following days of torrential February rains and icy snowstorms, daffodils and snowdrops pushed up through the half-frozen earth at Payne Hollow. Ephemeral streams sprang back to life, singing their way down steeply sloped hillsides and filling the hollow with the song of spring. I’ll take it; even a false spring offers hope.

Lately, a literal flood of bad news pours in from every direction. The whole world seems on edge. So, it was good for the soul to spend a couple of afternoons wandering around Payne Hollow. We climbed hills, listened to creek music, and mucked our way across flooded river bottom fields. The river was rising, but my spirit was settling.

While seeking relief in the Hubbard’s house from the cold wind blowing off the river, David (my husband) poked around and found a magnet attached to a door hinge. The engraving on the magnet depicted a man carrying a child across a river. Embarrassingly, after 16 years of Catholic education, I didn’t recognize it as a religious medal–the nuns who taught me would be disappointed—again.

Relying on the Gospel of Google (risky, I know, i.e., the Gulf of America) I learned it was a St. Christopher medal, a type made in Italy in the 1950’s. Google reports, “Christopher was a man of great size and strength who devoted himself to Jesus by helping travelers cross a dangerous river. One day a child asked to ride on Christopher's shoulders across the river, but the infant seemed to grow heavier and heavier with every step. When they arrived on the opposite shore, the child identified himself as Christ, telling the holy man that he had just carried the weight of the world. Saint Christopher became one of the most popular patron saints for travelers in the Middle Ages.”

The night before finding the medal, coincidentally (or maybe not; this story is a good reminder to keep room for serendipity in one’s life) we saw a documentary titled He Who is Blessed about Harvey Simmonds, who rescued the Payne Hollow manuscript that had been lost on the dusty shelves of a publishing company for years and facilitated he publishing the first edition by Eakins Press. What I didn’t know was that like Thomas Merton, Simmonds became a Trappist monk, a member of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance.

Here’s the thing: for years I’ve wondered if Merton and Hubbard knew each other, or of each other, or if any connection between them existed. I wanted to know not only for the reasons I’m about to outline below, but because both individuals have offered me ways of looking at the world that made living in the world a little easier.

Born 15 years apart at the beginning of the 20th century, both Merton and Hubbard lived for a time in New York City and were educated there; both had connections to the world of art and music, both felt deeply unsettled in their lives; both had early troubles with women; and in midlife both felt called to live in the rural hills of Kentucky. 

When Merton and Hubbard couldn’t reconcile the traditional path taken by most men of their generation, they both made choices that were considered unusual. One turned to God and the other turned to the river—semantics as far as I’m concerned. 

Merton went to live in a hermitage in the knobs of Nelson County at the Gethsemani monastery and Hubbard went to live in a nautical version of a hermitage, a one room Shantyboat that he set adrift downriver, and then eventually lived out his life in a small cabin in at Payne Hollow in Trimble County. But neither lived in isolation. Merton had his fellow monks and a community of artists and thinkers with whom he maintained relationships; Harlan was married to Anna, and had relationships with family, friends, and neighbors. Both men found deep inspiration in the woods and water—they wrote books, loved music, made art, kept journals and sought peace of mind and spirit on the “fringe of society.”

And now here is a third person, Harvey Simmonds, who went both to a monastery and the river. The similarities and connections between his life and the lives of Merton and Hubbard are remarkable. 

He was a star in New York City’s bohemian world of art and publishing. He was a master gardener, a botanical expert with deep connections to the earth. He credited Merton’s book, Seven Story Mountain, for saving his life when he was in deep despair during an episode of depression. He, too, had a relationship with a woman that ended badly. In midlife, he left his life in NYC to work on the Delta Queen for two years and was introduced to Harlan Hubbard by a riverboat captain. He became a monk, took the name Brother Benedict, and went to live in an abbey next to the Shenandoah River for the remainder of his life. 

How astounding is it that this is the person who got Harlan’s book published? Learning this piece of the Hubbard story and the connection to Merton delights me to no end. 

And because everything seems to be connected to everything else, it is not much of a leap to imagine that it was Harvey Simmonds/Brother Benedict who gave Harlan Hubbard the St. Christopher medal—a gift from one river traveler to another.

It’s also a bit wondrous that David found a St. Christopher medal after a day of building rock bridges so we could safely cross icy creeks flooded by a rising river all in pursuit of respite from the troubles of the world. 

I think I just found myself a patron saint. Now I just need my own St. Christopher medal.