(Originally published May 2006) — Dan Price is a self-proclaimed “hobo artist.” He lives in a hole in the ground (literally) in the mountains of Eastern Oregon and spends his days wandering, drawing and writing. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants and, by chance or accident, he is now a respected author, a bona-fide advertising guy, has owned two widely read magazines and has a legion of fans across the country.
Dan Price and Dad2Three
The people at the gas station on John Sevier Highway barely noticed the old Chevy Astro Van covered with drawings. It carried Price from Oregon, down the California Coast and over to New Mexico, through the hurricane-ravaged areas of Louisiana and on to the Florida Keys. From the Keys, where he spent time hanging out with rock legend Neil Young, Price traveled north through Atlanta to Knoxville. While a three-week, 17-state trek would exhaust even the most seasoned road-warrior; Price loved every minute of it.
I’ve corresponded with Dan Price for years. I stumbled across one of his articles in Backpacker magazine in the early 1990’s – and later discovered his Moonlight Chronicles magazine. We have many similar interests and started writing to each other and talking on the phone. After about ten years of knowing each other, we got to meet when he stayed with us a few weeks ago.
Raised in Oregon, the son of a logger and grandson of a well-know doctor, Price began his career as a photojournalist. Eventually, his newspaper work took him from Oregon to Kentucky, where he and his high school sweetheart, Lynne, started their family and had two children: daughter Shilo and son Shane.
In his spare time, Price traveled the back roads of Kentucky and built an impressive portfolio of fine-art prints. One set of black and white photographs, highlighting small-town churches, was exhibited in art galleries throughout the United States and Europe. The time spent in some of Kentucky’s poorest communities had a profound impact on Price.
“By most people’s standards, the people I photographed didn’t have anything,” Price said. “But the families relied on each other – the neighbors relied on each other – and they were some of the happiest people you could find anywhere. I envied their slow-paced, serene lifestyle – it was so opposite of my daily deadlines and worry-filled existence.”
The Hobo Artist-Mobile
In Kentucky, Price became fascinated with photography as an art form. He started a successful magazine called Shots to showcase fine art photography. He grew the magazine and eventually sold it to a larger publishing group. The magazine is still in business today and remains popular with professional art photographers.
With his photography magazine sold, Price was at a crossroads. “Photography had become too all-consuming for me,” he explained. “Everything I looked at and everything I experienced was being viewed through the lens of a camera. I started feeling like my camera was separating me from life – so I sold all of my equipment and decided I would just draw the things I saw.”
He took his family back to Oregon and became a student of drawing. He also started exploring alternative, environmentally responsible types of housing. Always intrigued by various shelters, and not wanting to take on a huge mortgage, Price considered tree houses, huts, sheds, cabins and tents before settling on a tipi. In 1990, on a two-acre meadow leased from a farmer for $50 a year, he erected and moved into a 20-foot tipi. He was in heaven; Lynne was not.
Not convince that “simple living” was a viable option, Lynne and the children moved into a conventional house six miles away. The rest of his family spent weekends and summers with him in the tipi, but stayed in the house during colder months and throughout the school year.
With his tipi in place, a blank notebook in hand and a pocketful of pens, Price started sketching. He sketched the mountains around his meadow, people in town, broken-down farm tractors and the everyday things people rarely notice. He also started writing about the simple life he led. The sketchbooks evolved into journals – and the people he encountered seemed genuinely interested in his Henry David Thoreau-style existence.
“At that point, I decided to ignore the societal pressures that try to define who I’m supposed to be,” Price said. “I was no longer going to let others decide what ‘success’ meant to me.”
In 1992, Price started publishing his journal/sketchbooks as The Moonlight Chronicles and sold them as a subscription-only “zine.” A zine (pronounced “zeen”) is a cut-and-paste, self-published magazine usually printed on a copying machine and distributed through mail order and word of mouth. As circulation increased, The Moonlight Chronicles caught the eye of a California-based entrepreneur who owned a shoe company.
Simple Shoes was the brainchild of Eric Meyer, a VW-driving skateboarder who related to Price’s simple lifestyle and minimalist philosophy. Meyer believed The Moonlight Chronicles magazine represented the same outlook he wanted to convey with his shoes, so a partnership was formed. Price would continue to wander, draw and write and, when it came time to print The Moonlight Chronicles, Simple Shoes would take over. Instead of the usual circulation (several hundred per issue), Simple Shoes printed thousands of copies of each issue and distributed them to stores across the country.
For years, Price continued to turn out monthly (or semi-monthly) issues of The Moonlight Chronicles and Simple Shoes distributed them. He also wrote three books: The Moonlight Chronicles (a compilation of his journals), How To Make A Journal of Your Life and Radical Simplicity – Creating an Authentic Life. When Simple Shoes was sold to Deckers Outdoor Corporation (makers of Teva shoes and sandals) in the late 1990’s, Price and Simple Shoes briefly parted company, but have since reestablished their relationship and a copy of The Moonlight Chronicles is inside every box of Simple Shoes that ships today.
About the same time Simple Shoes changed hands, Price decided to make some adjustments to his already-simple life. He got rid of his car and traveled exclusively on bicycles and a full-sized tricycle (which he eventually took on a four-month cross-country ride). He also traded in his tipi for what he calls his “Hobbit Hole.” Starting with a three-foot deep pit, Price built a mostly-underground structure just large enough for his bed, some cooking paraphernalia and his supplies. Still on the leased property, Price went underground.
Now, Dan Price mostly draws, writes and travels. He leaves the Hobbit-Hole about once each month and ventures out to see and draw things. Since January of this year, he’s been on the recent 17-state trek and to Mexico (for nearly a month). Simple Shoes helps with the cost of these trips (although compared to most business travelers, Price travels on the cheap) and distributes his Moonlight Chronicles to both subscribers and shoe stores. After a ten-year hiatus from photography, Dan recently picked up a new Nikon D-50 digital camera, so upcoming Moonlight Chronicles will feature his photography alongside his drawings and writing.
During the two days he was at our home, we got to hang out, took a long walk with my 12-year old, ate Chinese food (wonderfully prepared by Wife2Me) and had a lengthy discussion about digital photography vs. film photography. Ironically, the guy who lives in a hole thinks my views on photography are “pre-historic” and “outdated” (all in good fun of course). We’re hoping Dan’s travels bring him back to East Tennessee soon.
Check out Dan’s web site at www.moonlightchronicles.com and look for his books (Moonlight Chronicles, How To Make A Journal of Your Life and Radical Simplicity) on www.amazon.com.