The Woman Who Lives Alone On A Mountain

By Liz Alley

Ithink about her, the woman who lives alone on the mountain. I watched a twenty-five-minute clip about her, not much in proportion to all this thinking I’ve been doing. Her mountain is different from mine; her mountain, along with what I presume is her religion, requires she go through her daily tasks with a scarf covering her hair. I wonder since she is alone, why? No man could be tempted to sin by gazing upon her hair. Perhaps it was because she was filmed. Also, she goes about her chores in a skirt. She chops wood, milks a cow, and builds a fire, all in a skirt. In freezing weather with blowing snow, she makes her way from her living quarters, a crude one-room cabin, to her food shed, about 500 yards away, in a skirt. And I, wrapped in a blanket on the sofa because the air conditioning has made the house cool, watch in awe.

The video is about cooking, about all that is required of her to make a simple meal. However, the video causes me to wonder about other things. Did this idea start in a boardroom? Did a room full of ambitious millennials come up with the idea? “Let’s find a woman who lives alone on a mountain and cooks!” I imagine someone yelling among all the possibilities. How did they find her? Did an American boy with a man bun knock on her cabin door with a translator saying, “Hello, will you cook and let us film you?” Why did she agree? Was it because whatever payment would help to buy things like the pig head I watched her cut into pieces? The pig head that sat on her table with what looked like a cartoon smile on its face, beside the vegetables. The head that looked like its smiling lips would say, “Tha, tha, that’s all folks!”

Though the pig and other unidentifiable meat parts grossed me out, I’m not surprised by them. After all, I am the product of mountain people, and although my mother was not the typical mountaineer, my father was. As pig ears are called in my mountains, “listeners” were occasionally found in our refrigerator. Sometimes, bacon was sliced outside on the back porch from a hog my Uncle Bud had butchered. I have that mountain girl in me, but she’s been watered down by the softness of my mother and by living in the city.

This video’s title is straightforward: “Woman Lives Alone On A Mountain and Cooks.” I feel a sense of camaraderie with her about living alone. However, my alone is different. My alone is the kind that is peppered with a trot to T.J. Max and Target, then quickly back home to work, music, books, T.V., and sometimes a grandchild or two. My alone is in a hammock gazing at the night sky with hundreds of houses a stone’s throw away. Still, do we not gaze at the same sky?

The mountain woman was still on my mind as I made my dinner. I felt her presence in my modest kitchen, which I take for granted, and wondered if she would be in awe of its appliances or perhaps slightly disgusted. When I washed my hands, I was aware of my lemon and rosemary soap (procured by the trot to T.J. Max ) and of how much water I used when her water, brought in by buckets, was used sparingly.

When I finished my dinner with the groceries I had leisurely considered and purchased at Kroger, I brought it to my table in the living room and wondered where the mountain woman sits when she eats; the videos have yet to show this. I wonder if she enjoys the meal and is sad when it’s over especially given how much work she put into it. I often feel a little sad when my meal is over and sigh at putting the few dishes into the dishwasher and resent the extra step of jet dry that goes in along with the detergent. This awareness reminds me that I am a sturdy yet fragile person. Perhaps the mountain woman is also sturdy but fragile in a way that looks different than me. Her sturdiness is evident in her lifestyle, but her fragility may come from the need to be the woman on the mountain that lives alone.

Liz Alley was born and raised in Rabun County in the city of Tiger. She loves to write. She is an interior designer specializing in repurposing the broken, tarnished, chipped, faded, worn and weathered into pieces that are precious again. She is the mother of two daughters and has three grandchildren. She divides her time between her home in Newnan and Rabun County.

Liz would love to hear from you, drop her a line at Lizziewrites0715@gmail.com