Hurricanes

There have been a lot of hurricanes lately—Nature’s thugs. Hurricane Milton tore across Florida yesterday and two weeks ago Helene ripped the Appalachians a new one. There’s so much loss tallied each passing day.

And everyone notices how beautiful the weather is now. Storms create multidimensional catharses.

I think I’ll look back on 2022, 2023, and 2024 as its own kind of hurricane. The losses continue to tally. And like the many in the Asheville, NC area who are wondering how to reconstruct their lives, I am, too. There are years of rebuilding ahead. Lives have been altered. There’s damage. Lots of it.

I think of the man I heard about on NPR who has lived his entire life in the Blueridge Mountains. He knows nothing else. He wants nothing else. Which is why he’s chosen to rebuild his life in his woodshed rather than reduce “home” to shambles his house now is. He ain’t budgin’.

I think of the retirement community my dad described: a community of mobile homes that swept into oblivion with the mudslide. It’s yet to be determined if there are any survivors. No one’s coming forward to say they’re alive.

Life demands a lot of us humans.

I’m not inclined to reflect on the “heroism of the human spirit” right now. It feels cheap in light of so much loss. I know that Appalachia will move on from this; Asheville will rebuild its riverfront; artists will return to their lofts. It does not make us less noble to hold off on resilience manifestos when trying to survive.

Which is where I still am. For now. Maybe for a while.

There’s a lot of wreckage that life has dumped into my paradise, and I’m not satisfied reducing my “home” to the shambles of a house when I have a woodshed.