Pollywogg Holler

   Published in Pittsburgh, 2005

Bill Castle in 2005

         At first, it was a private spot, a little family project.  Slowly, it grew and eventually commanded a page in Fodor’s Nights to Imagine:  Magical places to Stay in America. 

            Pollywogg Holler, as it was named, began in 1976 when Bill and Barbara Castle bought 28 acres of land between Belmont and Alfred Station, in Allegany County.  Barbara insisted that she and Bill needed to get their kids involved in a family activity.  Some ambitious families might create a tree house in the backyard, and others -- more predictable folk -- might bake some cookies.  But the Castles, with their three children, grabbed saws, chains and sledge hammers and built a cabin.

            The Castles’ log-and-stone dwelling was originally intended as a weekend retreat.  Weekdays were spent in Hornell where Bill owned a construction company.  He built bridges for New York State in his stress-filled occupation until 1983.  That’s when he suffered a heart attack and life changed.  Bill sold the company, moved with his family to their cabin and enrolled in art school.

            Bill Castle feels that he learned to think deeply while he was a student at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University.  He says that art students focus more on creative thinking than on any particular aspect of art.  Problem solving is the real work.

            When Castle entered Alfred University, the original cabin had been completed.  (Now known as the Lodge, it is used for visitor reception, accommodation, food preparation and dining.) But with a constant flood of ideas, a school full of resources, and acres of empty land, Pollywogg Holler developed a life of its own.  Castle spent a year creating his second building – a structure bursting with personality - known as the honeymoon loft and sauna.      

            One enters by way of a covered porch, which shelters an extraordinary door carved with a Castle motto -- “bathe often, never hurry” -- and an inlaid glass depiction of the earth and moon.  Roof supports are capped with four sculptured rams’ heads cast in what art students call brassy bronze (a cheap material made of melted plumbing fixtures). 

            The stone porch floor continues seamlessly inside where it wraps up one wall and surrounds the thick metal door of a firebox.  Another wood door opens to the sauna and wooden steps and a few brick footholds lead to the loft-bed with a skylight for star viewing and access to a tiny balcony overlooking an outdoor stage, where solar-powered concerts rock for special occasions.   

            The loft and sauna, with a moss roof, is near a covered well festooned with more of Castle’s carving.  Castle presented these structures as his senior show at Alfred University, the culmination of his four-years of study.  Because Pollywogg Holler morphed from private home to public lodging, this “show” has now run continuously since 1988, with people enjoying the sauna, loft and stage during company parties, weddings, birthday celebrations, family reunions, benefits and pizza-barbeque parties. 

            Castle connected the lodge to the honeymoon loft with a small bridge and a curving path.  That path now also leads to an acoustic stage facing plank benches set around a campfire pit.  Behind the benches is Bistro de Holler.  The bistro is open on the sides but sheltered with a terra cotta roof.  It is filled with Castle’s hand-hewn tables and stools, furniture with character. 

            On most warm Wednesday nights, it seems that half the town sips wine and watches cheese bubble and brown on pizzas in the wood-fired Navajo-style oven.  During parties, some private, some public, chefs bake as many as 100 of these regionally famous pizzas while pulled pork and baked beans (special recipes prepared by the Bar-B-Q Bandits) slowly roast in a converted corn chopper. 

            If music, food, wine and company aren’t enough to help you relax, you might like to have a session with Don Powell, licensed massage therapist.  He’ll tell you about his raccoon, Uncle Albert, or his skunk, Jesse, while massaging your kinks with one of his many massage techniques – Russian, medical, Shiatsu, Swedish, reflexology or old Egyptian style. 

            Behind the bistro, a crooked, covered stairway, looking like a fantasy movie set, leads to a small door and a sleeping area – the wood loft -- a place to listen to acoustic music from the stage below, to watch birds and to enjoy the view of the forest from the tree tops.

            Another narrow path, behind the acoustic stage, leads to a bathhouse/restroom where a hanging barrel dispenses heated spring water into the private, candle-lit shower for two.   In an adjoining cubicle is a composting toilet.  It’s an odor-free unit where, instead of flushing, one closes the lid and walks away.  Similar toilets and showers are located throughout the site -- small, log outhouses blending into Pollywogg’s woods.

            Positioned away from the main buildings stands the so-called “love shack.”  You can sit on one of the chairs on the covered porch or step inside to find a quilt-covered bed and a small wood stove.  Originally built by son Quentin when he was a teen in need of private space, the love shack, guests say, is quaint, private, snug and well-named.

            All of these buildings are more sculptures than dwellings and all are hidden in the woods, a full quarter-mile saunter from the road and parking areas where a 40’ wide, stainless steel geodesic dome guards Pollywogg’s entry.  

            On the other side of the dome, alongside a creek, the path to the lodge is strewn with sculptures.  Over the past two decades, Alfred University’s art students have contributed an over-sized clay toaster, a huge metal tricycle and a towering head along with myriad other clay, glass, metal or wood sculptures.  (You’ll find them on this trail and in the weaving path known as High Water Trail.)    

            The path continues past a small waterfall, rustic bridges, the honeymoon loft, both performance areas, the main lodge and the bistro.   One side trail leads to the newest structure.  A break from the log or cedar-plank style of the other buildings, this is a steel-framed dome clothed in canvas and featuring a “floating bed,” an “air chair,” and plenty of windows for star gazing.  The bed is a huge steel hoop with a woven rope base and foam mattress.  Swaying in it, one can view the fireplace, the woods, or a nearby pond where frogs, mink and heron live.  When not in use, the bed cranks up to the ceiling giving plenty of polished floor space.

            Well past the Bistro is a double-pond area being developed as an eco-resort/spa/retreat for the purpose of bringing people closer to nature.  Castle’s architectural drawings depict five cabins, each roomy enough to accommodate two couples.  As planned, these cabins will be self-sufficient with solar-based electricity, solar showers, propane heat and composting toilets.  When completed, the area will have still another wood sauna as well as a wood-fired, Japanese style hot tub.  Right now, the first cabin is just a pile of logs harvested by Castle and his 1953 Allis Chalmers tractor, but there are lean-tos ready for guests. 

            We stayed there one spring when the ponds were full of tadpoles.  Walking around the ponds to the first lean-to (called Pine Knot), my husband, Rick, and I disturbed thousands of tadpoles who turned their wide heads away from the shallow edge and thrashed furiously toward the safety of deeper water. 

            That night we lingered over dinner in the lodge  – Cornish hen stuffed with wild rice pilaf for me and Steak Florentine with Parmesan cheese, spinach, mushrooms and garlic for Rick and, after dark, retraced our steps along the quiet path, lit with torches and tea candles set in stone niches.  At Pine Knot we were warmed by a fire, serenaded by frogs, soothed by night noises and enchanted by the stars.  In the morning, we followed the sounds of an axe.  Someone was splitting wood for the stove.  Castle, meanwhile, was slicing, frying and toasting breakfast at the lodge.  

            Later in the year, we stayed in the floating bed of the dome where our night was filled with hooting owls, croaking frogs and honking geese.  If you are interested in luxury cotton or silk sheets, room service and a private Jacuzzi, this isn’t your place.  Right now, Pollywogg Holler is for hearty, outdoor folk who consider mud to be a natural part of life and who are unruffled by the sounds of porcupines, raccoons or other rustling noises. 

            Barbara Castle says the big cabins at the ponds will be the last project for Pollywogg Holler, but Bill designs as naturally as he breathes so it’s hard to imagine that he would stop building and planning.  If you take the time to visit, he’ll sip some wine and share his ideas.  None will be ordinary or predictable, but they will be interesting and chances are he’ll draw you into them.  

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Driving Directions:  Pollywogg Holler is at 6242 South Road between Interstate 86 and Route 244.  From Buffalo, take 219 South to I-86 East at Salamanca.   Exit at number 32, West Almond.  At the end of the exit ramp, go straight down hill and turn left after the blue metal building.  Follow on South Road, a gravel road, for 2.5 miles.  The Pollywogg Holler office will be in the ranch-style house on the left but continue 100 yards to the parking lot on the right.  Park, walk through the geodesic dome and follow the trail through the woods to the Main Lodge.

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(This was published in 2005. Contact information, services and fees will likely be different.) 

Reservations:  The main lodge (the Castles now live in a house across the road), honeymoon loft and sauna, wood shed loft, dome and other buildings are available for overnight guests.  Rates start at $110 per person for dinner, lodging and breakfast.  Massages - $60 per hour.  Most meals, stressing organic ingredients, are prepared in the brick oven.  Special dietary needs can be accommodated.  Private parties for up to 100 people by arrangement.  Open all year.  Contact 585-268-5819, 800-291-9668, or click on the Web site,  www.pollywoggholler.com.

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Hours:  The sculpture garden is open to visitors daily from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. 

For pizza and barbeque information telephone Pollywogg Holler.

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Listed in:  Nights to remember: Magical Places to Stay in America by Peter Guttman, and Home Work by Lloyd Kahn Jr.

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Elaine Hardman, a writer and studio potter, lives in Wellsville, New York with her husband, Rick.