I’M SITTING at the moment at our pretty mountain getaway in Western North Carolina, and it’s the first time I’ve been back since the devastation of Hurricane Helene. You may remember the backstory: Tim and I had come for a regular visit late in September, and because I had a business meeting back home in Columbia, I brought my own car and headed back to South Carolina early. Tim and Stella, our dog, stayed on, intending to return home a week later. Helene was hardly a consideration at the time, and I grabbed a few things to take as I headed out, knowing full well I would be back in ten days, as dear friends were coming for a long weekend visit.

Then early Friday morning, in barreled Hurricane Helene. All hell broke loose on that mountain, and if you’re interested in reading about our harrowing experience, you can read about that here.

It astounds me to realize it has been 22 weeks since I’ve been back. Infrastructure has been slow in returning, a reality that’s easy to understand given our remote location and the horrific, widespread damage far below us in Asheville, Barnardsville, Burnsville, all around. Plus I will say Tim and I were very, very fortunate. Our house and property sustained little damage, a miracle given the monstrous winds that seemed determined to blow everything up here to Kingdom Come. Our property sits in a high altitude neighborhood, so while flooding was not an issue here, mud and rockslides were. Thousands of trees are down, and the road up to the neighborhood suffered extensive erosion and damage.

Tim prepared me for what I would see long before we reached the mountain. Still there were times, several times, when I asked him to please just stop the car—there was so much, too much, and I could not process. Then we would go on, and the landscape would become normal again, familiar, until we’d round a curve and BAM another swath gone, or evidence of a slide that had come down, crossed the road and continued on, taking rocks, trees, and parts of the unpaved road with it. Tim narrated as we went, reminding me of details I already knew: the day after the storm, the handful of folks in the neighborhood had come together, formed crews, and for three long days, done the impossible work of cutting and bulldozing their way to the crest of the state highway, a distance of some two-and-a-half miles. (All the while, they were completely cut off from the world—power grid gone, no internet, no cell service, and no understanding of the mass devastation around them.) Needless to say, this all felt more real to me now.

YESTERDAY WE DROVE to Burnsville, one of two valley towns at the base of our mountain, both of which were hit particularly hard by Helene. I exaggerate not when I say even seeing the destruction for myself the reality is unimaginable. Much progress has been made, still devastation extends for miles and miles and miles; so many homes are simply gone or have been left as shells that sit, now, on the edge of a ravine newly carved by violent water. Vehicles, twisted metal, debris of every kind—all seem caught in every crevice. The piles that have been collected via long-armed machinery and industrious individuals are stacked in long, tall rows that I swear go on forever.

And the people. Of course the people—even with the news coverage, and with the many personal stories I’d heard, it was impossible to imagine the horror the people in these valleys experienced—both during the dark, horrifying hours of the storm and during the confusing, desperate days and weeks and months that have followed. And now, as reality of the aftermath has surely settled heavy over them.

There is also this, which I did not expect and which washed over me in a way I can’t seem to even describe. The earth herself has been changed. Sacred, and scarred, it’s like she insists on bearing witness. The Cane River, gentle and peaceful and picturesque as she bubbled alongside Highway 197 through that valley—now the bed she lies upon has a shape almost grotesque. There’s no rhyme or reason, blown-out and raw and rocky and far too wide for the regular almost-creek amount of water that flows through, her banks now either undefined or standing as 10, 20, even 30 foot cliffs. And the mudslides. Good lord, the veracity, and the statement, of those mudslides.

All of this has served as a reminder to me—a very sobering reminder, particularly as underscored by these last few head-spinning weeks in our collective American history—how beautiful and fragile our world is; how precarious our routines; how small our magnificent lives.

Let’s love each other, hard.

Let’s count blessings.

Let’s be, and let’s share, the light.

XXOO,

Cathy

---