Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I wonder sometimes why I’m so fascinated by the nature of faith. Or maybe not. I really know why I stand gape-jawed before the example of people like Jimmy or Miz Kayreen. It’s their ability to stand strong in the face of hardship.

Maybe I think by being next to them a little of that rock solid resolve will rub off on me. That unflinching knowledge that things will always be alright because God is so firmly on their side. They put their trust in something so intangible, so completely ethereal and yet remain confident that all will turn out in the end.

I guess I just want a bit of that sort of peace. Their hardships are monumental compared to mine. I feel ashamed and guilty for being so undone by this whole thing with the pump.

My water now smells strongly of burnt PVC. The fumes are so strong they would probably put my friend Erin, who has MCSD, in the hospital.

The pump guy was here most of the morning. He put a new pump and sunk it an additional 60 feet down into the 400 foot well. The good news is that I had that extra 60 feet to go and that he doesn’t think, as he originally did, that I needed a completely new well drilled. The bad news is the 1000 dollar bill I keep looking at with unbelieving eyes.

But this is nothing compared to outliving your child. Or being one of the last of your kind and watching the demise of your religion like Jimmy. Or waiting for death with the ghost of your husband, twenty years gone, like Mizz Kayreen. Each of these people will tell you how blessed they are.

I drove the jeep up to Hall’s Top where luckily, that spring had not dried up, this morning. I stood there weeping softly as the water slowly filled up my two 6 gallon tanks and two gallon jugs. I wonder to myself how many women with real cause to weep stood at this spring or some other in these hills. Women who did this every single day of their lives and carried that water on bowed shoulders swinging buckets on yokes made for people, not oxen.

So I’m running my taps in the house on full trying to get the dreadful stench from my pipes and water heater. I still have the water I collected from the spring for drinking and hopefully the smell will be gone enough soon to water the livestock. They have a half a bucket left up there, but the geese are starting to get cranky.

So, I feel a little foolish for feeling like I’m forever scrambling to meet the lowest tier of my pyramid of needs. I think water is down there somewhere. I’m just not worthy of women who came before me here.

Someday I’ll tell you about Libby. She and her husband scraped together a meager existence cutting firewood. He would cut it in the deep woods and then pile it on a pallet. Then Libby would harness herself in and drag it up the mountain. She never had enough to eat and the two of them didn’t seem to have the same sort of survival skills others seemed to have here. Skills that enabled them to put together a life in these hills from practically nothing. They were probably a lot like most of us.

But, I’m feeling a bit pitiful. And embarrassed for feeling so.

I wish I had the sort of faith that let me take this all in stride.

I’m such a wimp.