He lived most of his life in a log house along the Dead Mare Branch of Little Carr Creek, Knott County, Kentucky.
Lonie, Still's mother was sixteen when she moved to Alabama due to a tornado destroying the family home.
He found greater interest not in the school text books but at home where there was an edition of the Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge.
Still tried various professions including the Civil Service Corps, Bible salesman, and even a stint picking cotton in Texas.
His friend Don West—a poet and civil rights activist, among other things—offered Still a job organizing recreation programs for a Bible school in Knott County, Kentucky.
Still moved into a two-story log house once occupied by a crafter of dulcimers, Jethro Amburgey.
River of Earth is a discussion of change in Appalachia, depicted as the struggles of a family trying to survive by either subsisting off the land or entering the coal mines of the Cumberland Plateau in the reaches of eastern Kentucky.
"Forever I've wanted to set us down in a lone spot, a place certain and enduring, with room to swing arm and elbow, .
Conversely, her husband Brack is committed to the mines and answers her as the family provider: "It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth.
She is willing to trade the sentence of living from hand to mouth through the year for the security of a personal place; he, to endure famine for the short seasons of feasting that mine work allows.