In the rugged hills of the Appalachian Mountains in 1917, there lived an old woman whose weathered face told stories of a life well-lived. She sat on her wooden porch, nestled in the shadows of towering trees, her keen eyes watching the world pass by. The air was crisp, carrying the scent of pine and earth, a familiar fragrance that had surrounded her for as long as she could remember.
The photograph was taken during Cecil Sharp’s folk music collecting expedition: British musician Sharp (1859–1924) and his assistant Dr Maud Karpeles (1885–1976) collected folk songs from the mountain singers of the Appalachians (North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky), between 1916 and 1918.
She was known simply as Granny Mae, a name whispered with respect by the folks in the valley below. No one knew exactly how old she was, and Granny Mae herself had long stopped counting the years. Her hair, once as black as a raven’s wing, had turned to silver, a testament to the decades that had come and gone. Yet, her spirit was as strong as the mountains that cradled her home.
Every evening, as the sun dipped behind the peaks, Granny Mae would light her pipe, a simple clay piece that had been with her for as many years as she could recall. The tobacco she used was grown in a small patch of land behind her cabin, tended to with the same care she had once given her children, now grown and scattered. With a practiced hand, she packed the pipe and struck a match, the flame flickering in the cool mountain breeze.
As she drew in the first puff, the smoke curled lazily around her, drifting up to join the mist that clung to the hillsides. The pipe was her companion, a ritual that connected her to the land and the memories it held. She’d sit in her rocking chair, the creak of the wooden boards beneath her feet the only sound in the stillness of the evening, save for the occasional call of a distant owl.
Granny Mae’s mind would wander as she smoked, back to the days when she was a young girl running barefoot through the forest, or to the time she met her late husband, a mountain man who had won her heart with his quiet strength. She’d think of the long winters they endured together, and the warm summers spent raising their family, teaching them the ways of the mountains.
To the occasional passerby, she might have seemed like a relic of a bygone era, a lone figure living out her days in solitude. But to those who knew her, Granny Mae was the heart of the mountain, a living link to the old ways, to a time when life was simpler and more in tune with the rhythms of nature.
As the last light faded from the sky, she’d finish her pipe and tap out the ashes, watching as the embers glowed briefly before winking out. She’d rise slowly, feeling the familiar aches in her bones, and with one last look at the mountains she loved, she’d retreat inside her cabin, ready to do it all again tomorrow.
Granny Mae’s porch was more than just a place to sit; it was a sanctuary, a place where the past and present intertwined, where the smoke from her pipe carried her thoughts to places far beyond the mountains, even as her feet remained firmly planted in the rich soil of Appalachia.
