A Mountain of Faith

I have always felt that each woman needs at least 7 other women in their lives who will listen, advise, hold them up, light the way. This is the first in a line of essays where I honor the strong women who have provided a light for my path, be it one moment of for years. I met Edna only once, but she made such an impression…

A vision in dark brown cotton from head to toe smiled from across the freshly swept yard. Her homemade dress was buttoned up to the neck and reached all the way down to her ankles.  She wore a brown sweater.  A matching brown bonnet covered her head.  Her boots were supportive of mountain walking.  It was evident that everyone here revered Edna as a matriarch.  She was bombarded with a flood of grandchildren, nieces, nephews and neighbors rushing up to give her a hug.   Once a year, near her birthday, people stop by to pay their respects.  Bearing food and musical instruments, they have come to stay the day.  I accompanied my friend Barb for what she called, “walking up the holler a-ways to a singin.”

I knew the minute I met Edna she was something special. She was surrounded by an energy that was evident to me. I felt it. I don’t read auras, but if I did hers would be bright. After a bit of chit chat with my friend Barb about how she’d been, Edna took my hand. A pool of water formed in her eyes and she said, “I know you by your touch.  Praise Jesus.  I can feel Him in you.”  She didn’t let go of my hand for some time and pulled me around the yard introducing me to her family, being as though I’d never been there before. Her brother Joe, seemingly well known in the bluegrass music crowd, was entertaining a gathering on the porch of a log cabin. She lived out of the far reaches of electricity or indoor plumbing, off the grid you might say, but had all the amenities needed for a strong healthy life.  

She wanted to show me things, like the treadmill her son had made.  A horse walking the treadmill turned a long pole which was attached to the handle of an ice cream freezer.  “You can churn with this or anything,” she said.  “Isn’t it great?”  She was proud of her life and proud of her children. 

“How many children do you have?” I asked.

“Seven. They’re all real smart about this mountain and can do anything it takes to live.  I taught them that. Respect the mountain and it respects you, gives you a good life.”  Then she leaned in, “But, they ain’t had no education.  I wouldn’t let’em go,” she whispered.

“They do have an education, though, about life,” I said.  She smiled.

“You’re right,” Edna said.  “God told me to come up on this mountain and live and raise my kids and He would provide what we needed, so I did.  I take care of His Mountain and He takes care of me. I’m the only one knows how to keep this place clean.” 

She told me of getting married and moving north to Ohio as part of the out migration looking for jobs. “I had no business being up there,” she said.  “It made me sick.”  Her words echoed feelings I’d heard before, being a southern girl and all.  “The doctors said I had cancer,” she continued.  “They gave me three months to live, but God told me to get back to the mountains and I’d be okay.  That was fifty years ago.”  Her faith was unshakable. Being in her presence brought me a sense of peace.

She and her family are squatters on wild mountain property. She says, “You can live on it, but you can’t own it,” and “The less the government knows about you, the better.”  She doesn’t believe in deeds or government assistance. 

“How many grandchildren?” I asked.

“Honey, I think its twenty-two if they ain’t slipped no more in on me since I last counted.  They’re spread all over.  Most of them will be here today, though.  I even have some in-laws coming in from Ohio.  That should be fun.  They don’t know why I like to live up here.  They’re town people. I always like to show’em my fancy outhouse.”

A young man walked up with a big smile on his face and hugged Edna. 

“Hey, Granny, how are you?” he said.  He wore a black AC/DC shirt and tight straight legged black pants, and his dyed blue/black hair hung over part of his face.  His ears were pierced. 

“I guess you heard I fell,” she said.  “I broke a rib, punctured my lung.”  She held her side to show him where it hurt.

“I heard that,” he said.  His arms wrapped around her in a protective and loving hug.  “I hope you learned a lesson from that, wandering around up here all by yourself.”

“Honey, the lesson ain’t for me.  God lets me be a lesson to others.  I prayed real hard for God to get me out of that ditch.  He commenced to healing me and brought me home.  I’m almost as good as new.  The lesson’s for you.  It’s about faith.”  He laughed and kissed her on the cheek then moved on to talk to his cousins.  Edna didn’t judge him or scold him or any of the others.  She accepted them and loved them and they loved her.

“Do you ever leave the holler?” I said.

“Oh, yes, honey, I go up on the mountain and over to the cave, and sometimes I go over to another holler where my girls live.  I travel all over these hills.  I have two or three places in different hollers where I sleep.” It wasn’t exactly what I meant, but I got my answer.

The log cabin her son had built with hand hewn logs was plainly elegant with a full wrap around porch.  It was placed in a wide clearing in the deep woods near the creek bed road we had foot traveled earlier. He had one room dedicated to the food he canned and preserved from his own garden, enough to last all year.  A Lincoln style wood plank fence enclosed pastures of horses; some were being ridden by the grand-children.  A hay wagon in the yard became a table for all the food being brought in by the arm-loads.                         The vivid greens of the grass, trees and hills reminded me of a lush spring though it was near the end of summer. Not the hot browned look of our burned-up city lawns looking for relief. The creek we had followed sang to us as water flowed over rounded rocks. With no unsightly electric wires, cell-phone towers or satellite dishes it was easy to transport ourselves into another century.

My grandparents were dead before I was born, though I experienced summers on the family farm without utilities. Playing at the springhouse, catching rain-water in a barrel and decorating an outdoor toilet made me appreciate what it takes to live. I am grateful I was able to connect to my grandparents’ way of life.   

“So, you don’t live here with your son?”

“No, honey, I have my own place, several places really.”

“Tell me about the cave,” I said.

“There’s a cave with a spring in it.  That’s where we used to do our laundry.  I make a bed in there with a sleeping bag.  Sometimes I stay there two or three days.”

“What do you do there, while you’re waiting on your laundry to dry?” I asked.

“I pray.”  She pointed to an attractive woman, mid-thirties, with long, loose blond curls hanging over her shoulder.  She wore a red blouse and dress pants.  “When that young’un there was little enough to fit in the sleeping bag with me, we both went up there and stayed.  I came out one time and found snow about yay deep.”  She put her hands about twelve inches apart.  “I’m real lucky my kids let me do what I want.”

“How old are you, Edna?” I asked.

“I’ll be seventy-nine, August the ninth.”

“Do they worry about you a lot?”

“Sometimes I have to wait till they’re all gone if I want to climb on the roof or something.  They fuss about that.  They know how to find me, though, if I ain’t home.  I’m usually at the cave.  But that cabin on the mountain is where God wants me most of the time. It’s a place we used to have services.  People from all over these hills came up there to sing and pray.” Edna had a yard full of guests, easily over a hundred, many of whom had transported themselves into her holler by horse or foot so it wasn’t hard to imagine she was telling the truth.  “One time, I was worried about food and God told me he’d provide me all the food I wanted.  Don’t you know, swarms of bees moved into that cabin with me and stayed up in the ceiling between the cardboard and the tin.  I used cardboard you know, like people do to insulate the inside of the cabin.  Some stopped coming up there cause they were scared of the bees but they didn’t bother me none so I left’em alone and before long I had the prettiest honey combs you ever did see.  That honey tasted sweet, like the butter had already been added.  People came then I reckon cause they wanted my honey.” She laughed at the memory. “That’s how God provides for me.”  We meandered around the yard arm in arm looking at the handiwork of God and Edna’s children. The whole scene was like a memory I’d forgotten to have. I wanted to hold it close, study it so it wouldn’t slip away. 

“Do you have any preachers in your family?”  I don’t know why I asked that but she seemed like an incarnation of…well, something. I just wondered what religion she claimed.

“My uncle called himself a Holy Ghost preacher.  Some people call them Holiness. But, I don’t go in for all that.  People didn’t used to care what you called yourself as long as you belonged to God.  I think God don’t care what you are as long as you’re listening to Him.  And, I listen honey, Praise God!”  Tears seemed always just behind her soft eyes as she squeezed my hand.  “God walks beside me all the time, invisible.  Some people can’t see it.  But you see it.  I can tell because He walks with you, too.”

Barb came along and reminded me that I had to be back in town by 2:00 p.m. I had completely forgotten to check my watch.  Somehow it didn’t seem important anymore. I could have stayed all day and night talking to Edna. I realized I must be monopolizing her time with her family so I made a move to leave.  I hugged her and said I’d best be going. I felt so connected to Edna I wanted to be related to her. I wanted to be her.    

“Can I come back and see you some time?”  I said.  “I want to talk to you about signs.”

“Oh yes, honey.  They’s signs and you need to know’em.”  I got the feeling Edna knew things about me that I didn’t know myself, that there was a collective presence here today, in both of us.  “God tells us everything we need to know.  It’s up to us to listen,” Edna said.  “But, don’t wait too long about gettin’ back up here,” she squeezed my hand again, “Hear me?”

“How will I let you know I’m coming?” 

“You call my daughter, “Dee,” she’s the only one with a phone.  She lives out on the road.  She’ll tell you where to find me.”  It was the daughter who’d spent nights with her in the cave when she was little, now obviously a woman of the modern age.

“If you come back up here to see Mama, better plan on staying a couple of days,” Dee said.  “Call me and I’ll tell her you’re coming.”

They had a message system.  An old push-mower, the kind without the motor and with a box attached to the back for tools sits at the bottom of the hill beneath Edna’s cabin.  She puts a note in the toolbox if she needs something and the children put a note in there if they want her to come down to see them or need to get her a message when she’s not home.

The realization that she was truly off the grid was just forming in my mind.  I knew Barb had said she homesteaded her place, and home-schooled her children way before it was a fad, but she truly did live outside the lines.  I learned also that she birthed her children at home and they did not have social security numbers. 

“If I’m not home, I’ll leave red strings tied to the tree limbs so you can follow.  I might be at the cave.”  I have to admit it scared me a little bit, to think about trekking all over this mountain by myself, following red strings to find Edna, though I hoped I had it in me. 

I wanted to imagine I’d finally met my grandmother or maybe even several generations of grandmothers.  I couldn’t get enough of her.  I forgot about my at home to-do lists and expectations and remembered ancestral things I once knew but had let slip away.  I felt a sacred whisper flowing through my veins and I was grateful.

 It took thirty minutes walking a fast clip back to the place we’d abandoned the car and at least another thirty to drive back to town.  I didn’t talk but inhaled as much of Edna as I could. All I could think of was coming back. I wanted to tell everyone about this hidden treasure of times past as if I’d discovered her myself, but at the same time didn’t want anyone spoiling what she had accomplished, as if it were my job to protect her secrets.  Her simple lifestyle relying on intuition and signs to guide her daily decisions comes from being totally in touch with her mountain roots.  Roots I share but skills yet to be honed.

On our way out, people continued to trek back into the holler and Barb explained there would probably be 400 people by the end of the day.  My secret treasure wasn’t a secret.

“Dolly Parton has even been here,” Barb said.  “Edna’s grand-daughter breaks and trains all Dolly’s horses.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.  “I should write a story about her.”

“Everybody’s written about her.  There’s a whole chapter in a textbook at Appalachian State University.”  I felt like I had been spiritually blind and this was a day of vision.     

Edna is a monument, a mountain of faith.  She doesn’t have to leave her holler or travel the earth to become wise or make a difference.  She only has to listen to the earth as it speaks to her. I was only with her for a short while, but she saw me and I saw her and it made a difference. She is not a traveler, she is a destination.   

(This essay was written in 2006. Edna has been gone for several years now, but she is still remembered.)