Bearing Witness in a Hurricane

Vignettes from my first days after Hurricane Helene

Every time I try to talk about Hurricane Helene, I think of Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride. “Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.” In this case, even summing up the hurricane and strikes me as a daunting task. So I won’t do it. Instead of an overview, I’m offering some side glances. Snapshots of my life since this storm turned it upside down. The vignettes are not in chronological order, but each one is labeled with the day I wrote it. Enjoy!

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09/29, Two days After the Storm 

On the afternoon of the storm, everyone poured out of their houses. I live in North Asheville, a wealthier section just outside of downtown. We got hit hard, but not the worst. Not by a long shot. I walked under fallen power lines and around upended root beds the size of two story houses. Everyone was staring at everything. There was a feeling of simultaneous horror and festival as people emptied into the streets. 

The broken sidewalks that afternoon were teeming with bicycles and scooters and running kids. More than I had ever seen. I was jealous of the families. Jealous that the parents were a team, that the kids gave them a reason to pretend at normalcy. The image of one child in particular from this strange afternoon lingers with me. She was about half my height. She pulled up on the sidewalk beside me while I was walking. She was on a scooter. It was a narrow sidewalk. Her scooting pace exactly matched my walking pace, so we progressed along the sidewalk in chummy fashion for some time. Even though her shoulder kept bumping my elbow, she did not acknowledge me. Did not even look my way. She conducted herself as if my presence beside her was the least interesting thing that could possibly have happened. I tried not to take it personally. There was stiff competition for her attention. Giant trees sitting atop smashed cars, power lines laying across the road like blankets, etc. 

Not only was the girl ignoring me, she was talking to herself. But then I realized it wasn’t talking. She was singing. “Sweet dreams are made of these,” she sang. “Travel the world and the seven seas!” 

She was pitchy. 

She wasn’t even singing, really, so much as doing some very concentrated muttering. I remember it felt strange to listen to a song that was older than me come out of a child who was so much younger. I was preparing myself to join in. It felt like that kind of day. But then we reached a spot where a root system had pushed up the concrete, so that it made a splintered hill in our path. Still singing, the girl picked up her scooter, walked it up and over the mountain of rubble, and then pulled away from me as she sped down the other side. I didn’t see her after that, though I did enjoy my view of an exasperated woman jogging past me a minute later shouting “Sabrinaaa!” 

“Sweet Dreams” was in my head for the rest of the day. 

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10/6, 8 days after the storm 

Here is what I loved, at the beginning of the storm. The hardest thing in all our lives, in that moment, was shared. 

There are always hard things going on in all of our lives. We forget this, because they are not the same. The person next to us could be worried about an audition or a son in jail or a speeding ticket or a tumor or a breakup. Everything we carry is different, and as we move through grocery stores and gas lines and sidewalks, we carry it in the dark. But for a little while after the storm, it was almost the same. 

I have to tell you something about this period. I became clairvoyant. I could tell you what every single person was thinking about. 

I will tell you what it was. They were thinking about the storm. 

When we all had the same load to carry, we couldn’t help but see each other carrying it. It made us kind. Several people came up to me and asked if I was ok, if there was anything I needed. They looked me in the eye when they said it. There have been other days in my life I needed that more, or at least as much, as the day of the storm. But those were days when my grief was my own. No one could see it. No one knew to ask. 

I don’t miss the beginning of the storm. I was in shock. Spliced from my family, walking a thin line between independent and alone. But I’ve been out of Asheville for a day and a half now, and I am unsatisfied every time I cross a sidewalk. The gentle eye contact and inquiries with strangers are gone. People look down, or I look away from them. 

I know this is the way of the world. Unbounded empathy with everyone we meet is not sustainable. Even in Asheville, the vacuum of social structure did not hold for long. It is already coagulating into a new, messy sort of order. And the order brings distance, brings rules. 

Still, I find myself wishing we could be shaken out of our silly insistence on separate lives. I wish it was always that easy to bring our griefs and joys to the table, like one giant neighborhood potluck.

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09/30, 3 days after the storm 

The first thing my next door neighbor put back was her wind chimes. She did it before sweeping off her porch or setting foot near the felled oak tree in her yard. We didn’t have power or water or wifi. But we had wind chimes. 

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09/28, Day after the storm

Future Catastrophe Survival List

• Full tank of gas

• Hand sanitizer

• Do a load of laundry 

• Books to read

• Plenty of nonperishable food

• Take a shower (enjoy it) 

• Cash

• All electronics at full charge

• Every bathtub full of water

• Every available vessel full of drinking water 

• Propane

• Charcoal

• Pens and paper

• Memorized directions to grocery stores and friend’s houses

• Coffee

• Flashlights and batteries

• Paper plates and bowls

• Finish all essential outside world tasks 

• Hunker down with beloveds, if possible 

• Non perishable food 

• Minimally perishable fresh food (carrots, cabbage, oranges). 

• Board games

• Poetry 

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10/1, 4 days after the storm 

The first night, I heard people laughing from my open window. I thought, I want to make laughter like that. And then I pitied myself and went to bed. The next night I had a plan. The  plan was, go over and join them. I had to ease into it. First I spied on them by taking out the recycling. It turned out to be a desperately necessary task, though I never would have thought to do it without the spying incentive. I thought about bringing my Trader Joe’s “Pound Plus” bar of dark chocolate, because it was the only thing I had to give. I was a Bona Fide Little Drummer Boy by this point. Me and my heartfelt, meager offering. The only difference between me and the Little Drummer Boy is that I ended up choosing not to bring the only thing I had to offer. There was no telling how long until I could get my hands on more chocolate, so I figured it was safest not to share.

I walked over empty-handed. The neighbors watched me curiously as I plodded up their front walk. It seemed to take a while. I told them I lived next door and asked if I could sit for a bit. Everyone immediately rose from their chairs and offered them up. I don’t remember the name of the woman who sat beside me, but I remember that her dog was named Tater Tot. The young couple that seemed to be running the show was cooking hamburgers on a charcoal grill. We had a rousing discussion about mayonnaise, the best brands and whether BBQ joints could be tolerated if they did not make it in house. Everyone was particularly eager to slander one BBQ place I’d never heard of. Their amazing BBQ was apparently incapable of redeeming them from the horror that was their mayonnaise. We got very tickled at the idea of going out the next day to protest at the store. “Enough is enough,” we wanted our signs to say, about the poor quality condiment. “If not now, when?” we wanted to chant, while the sirens sped by. “Beggars CAN be choosers,” we wanted to scream, while they handed out heaps of free barbecue to the mulling masses in need.

I had passed these particular neighbors many times and always wondered whether we would get along. But after so many months of pretending not to notice each other, it was hard to imagine what it might take to give up the ruse.  

After the burgers came the frozen pizza, tossed over a sheet of tin foil straight onto the grill. The bottom got charred black before the cheese on top had even melted. “Let’s just flip it over,” someone said. The idea of the frozen pizza cheese dripping straight into the hot coals gave us no end of delight. “Just flip it over!” we shouted at random intervals for the rest of the night. After the pizza, someone brought out pumpkin spice sugar cookies. The kind that come in precut circles, and have little Santa and Reindeer designs around Christmas time. “My brother and I always used to sneak these cookies into the grocery cart when we were little,” I said. The strict truth is that I always used to think about doing this, and never had the guts to follow through. But I was trying to make friends, and I liked my version better. 

We barely cooked the sugar cookies, hoping for a light melting more than a bake. They had an aftertaste of cookie, but the initial taste was full-frontal grill. “I could be convinced I was eating a hot dog,” I said, and everyone laughed in a hearty, spewing way. I was proud to be funny, and proud to make friends. But I wondered whether the capacity to make myself agreeable to crunchy young adult strangers would continue to be an in-demand skill. I had been reading too much Octavia Butler. This wasn’t quite the dystopia she describes, but it bore as much resemblance to Parable of the Sower as to normal life. It might soon, I thought, become more important to appear threatening than friendly. 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed having a cookout with my neighbors while I could. I watched each person follow my fearless leadership, skeptically raising a grilled cookie to their lips. The cookies stuck on their fingers, leaving a residue of buttery goo. One by one they chewed. They paused. And then they spluttered “Holy shit, they really do taste like hot dogs!”

Of course they did. I would never lie about such a thing.

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9/30, 3 days after the storm

72 hours in, and the sirens are still endless. I am no longer surprised when I hear the sound, but it would be a misconstrual to say I am used to them. It’s hard to think about the sirens. It’s hard not to think about them, too. It’s hard to think about the first responders and wonder if they’ve slept or eaten. If their families know where they are, or if they’ll ever get enough therapy to unpack all the things they must be seeing. 

It’s harder to think about the people they’re rescuing. Were they stranded? Thirsty? What does it feel like for the body to need what it cannot have? For the flesh to fight for survival? For a few seconds, I am only yards away as the ambulances rush past. And then, a very short time later, I am very far away indeed. It’s strange to keep reading my book. I am grateful that I am sitting with my feet propped up under a blanket on my deck. It’s also true that I feel like a limp, useless noodle. 

The hardest time to hear the sirens is when it’s dark and it’s raining and I’m snuggled in my bed. When I hear sirens at night,I am not sorry to be unuseful. I am glad my only job is to sleep. 

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10/6, 9 days after the storm

Everyone keeps telling me that Western North Carolina is coming together under these circumstances like no community they've ever seen. Military folks, politicians, people who have seen this stuff before. They’re all saying it. We are the exception! This is meant to be good news. It’s hard for me to receive it as such. 

I’ve already seen the way we’re coming together. I’ve seen people lifting each other up before they’re able to stand themselves. I’ve seen valiant leaders emerge from the bodies of ordinary people. The storm, like a sculptor, reveals the face that was always in the stone.

Nobody has to tell me that my Appalachian community is fucking brilliant. That’s something I already know. 

What I hear when people tell me we’re exceptional is that not everyone responds like we’re responding. This is what I find staggering. This storm is hard enough as it is, and I see heroes everywhere I look. They weave together, over and under and through each other, until the straw mat is strong enough to catch people when they fall. And still, some people fall. How does anyone stay standing without the mat?

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10/2, Five Days After the Storm

I have started to feel like I’m playing some perverse game of Catan. The business of all our days is gathering resources. Except, we don’t care about stone or hay. We certainly don’t want any more wood. There’s heaps of it on every street corner. For us, the central resources in play are water, power, wifi, cell service, food, cash, gas. For many, shelter and medical care are also on that list. Right now I am relatively well supplied with everything but gas. I am tantalized, in just the way I once felt when I needed only one more unattainable brick to build the longest road and cinch the victory. Just one! Just gas and I could beat this storm! I could drive around, volunteer, see my people. Drive myself right out if I need to. 

Everyone is missing something.

Some have gas but no power, power but no food, plenty of food but not a single person to give them a hug. 

Some folks are missing just about everything. 

As the rhythms of our normal lives opened up like a sinkhole beneath us, the mission to procure resources became the closest thing we have to a routine. 

It’s Tuesday, five days after we lost water. I have to count on my fingers to remember. And you can feel it starting to wear. Most people have left if they are able to. Those of us still here are the ones left behind. The streets are eerie. Not quite deserted, but unnaturally still. 

Catastrophe is raw and shocking and spiked with adrenaline. But dystopia is resigned and heavy. Less like lightning and more like eternal night. People are still volunteering. There are hubs for free resources everywhere you look. But not as many people are waving. I can feel our suspicion of each other creeping in, like the strange heaviness that hits my ears before I get sick. Today I feel lonely. Today, for the first time, I want to leave. 

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10/3, 6 days after the storm

On the first afternoon after the day everything went to hell, (Friday, y’all might call it), I saw a dog running down my street. Big, bushy, well-groomed dog with a collar. Might have been a golden retriever. (I adore golden retrievers. One in a blue moon, I get compared to one. I always blush down to my toes). It seemed to make sense that there would be a loose dog running down the street. Even though the dog was dry, and my neighborhood didn’t have the kind of floods to sweep a dog away anyway. It made sense in the way that chaos breeds chaos. I watched the dog lope down the sidewalk. I waited for someone to run after it. No one did. “Bummer,” I thought, and went back to my writing. But a few minutes later I saw the dog again. It was bounding through my neighbor’s yard. 

“Wait,” I thought. “This is my moment! I’ll save the dog!” I was very excited. I pictured a tearful reunion between dog and owner, me standing to the side with hands clasped behind my back. I would be smiling. Perfect, I thought. I set my journal down. I sprinted upstairs. I grabbed my tennis shoes, and also a book. I had it all planned out, you see. I had no leash and no way of contacting the owner, so I would simply have to sit, holding the dog’s collar, on the curb of my intersection. Sooner or later the owner would come and see me holding the dog. 

It was a very busy intersection. 

Then the joyful, teary reunion would commence. In my neighborhood, and with that dog, it was likely to be a wealthy person. Maybe they would give me money. Maybe they would even give me a job! But there was no telling how long I’d have to wait on the commencement of this happy chain of events. Hence, the book. I left my novel on the curb where I planned to return with my freshly caught canine. Then I took off at a jog. 

So. I did not find the dog. I jogged for a couple minutes, walked somewhat quickly for a couple more. I asked one stranger on the street if she’d seen a golden retriever. 

“You lost your dog?” she asked me.

“No.”

“Oh,” she said. She hadn’t seen the dog. After about five minutes, I wandered back to my house. I picked up my book from the curb where I left it. I was disappointed to miss my chance at glory. I already had the headline planned out. “Hope in Catastrophe: Young, Pungent Hero Rescues Neighbor’s Dog.”

As soon as it became clear that I would never go viral for my heroic five minutes of half-hearted jogging, I pretty quickly forgot about the dog. 

In my defense, I had a lot on my mind. 

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10/5, 8 days after the storm

On the second day after the storm I drove over to my friends’ house. Eye witnesses report that they somehow got blasted by a tornado as well as the hurricane. It is a different level of warzone over there. When I left, I told them I would come back the next day. But when it came time to get in the car, I found that it was hard to make myself go. 

Things were starting to feel hopeful near my house. Trees were being cleaned up. Truckloads of teenage boys from Alabama had descended upon the power lines. The doors in my house stayed open, and four or five neighbors from around the block floated in and out to use our gas stove. There was purpose in the air, and camaraderie. Even excitement. 

But as I drove towards their neighborhood, my embers of hope dulled and died. In several places along the way, the road swallowed to one lane, both directions taking turns passing through. Sometimes it was because the giant, fallen trees had only been chainsawed enough for one car length. Sometimes it was because cars had to sneak through the odd archway of a power line. At one point, I had to drive under a bowed evergreen tree. It made a narrow tunnel over just one lane. The elegantly draped branches slid over the roof of my car as I passed under. Even in the untouched inside, my shoulders hunched. It was as if I were the car, our personal bubbles violated as one. 

Almost everyone on the road was excessively polite, stopping and waving and letting the other lane pass first.  

When I pulled into their driveway for the second time, the ground was still littered with mammoth trees. Most houses were damaged or destroyed. Every view was a promise of work to be done, every fallen tree demanding attention like a child yanking on a parent’s hand. I watched weariness move in like a new neighbor that planned to stay. It hung on the people standing slack-jawed and staring at the sky. It piled on the bent backs of bodies slowly heaving branch after branch into a pile in the corner of their driveway. I was scared of being in place where the enormity of the storm is unmistakable. It feels forlorn. I miss normalcy, miss her like an old friend who has gone off to war, perhaps never to return.

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10/1, 4 days after the storm

I went to two neighborhood dinners in the last two days. The first was at my friends’ house deep in North Asheville, far enough from the city to be quiet and still. The second I hosted for my neighbors at my own home, just North of downtown. They were very different dinners. 

In the North Asheville dinner, everyone poured out of houses they had lived in for years. At my downtown dinner, most people came from apartments they had just moved into. 

The dinners were just seven miles apart. It takes eleven minutes to drive between the two neighborhoods, or twenty if you have to navigate downed trees and power lines. And yet the North Asheville potluck was populated with southern accents, while the downtown version had none. Many of the North Ashevillians worked remotely, and were hoping to reach their respective bosses regarding the situation we found ourselves in. My downtown neighbors worked in service or cleaning jobs. That dinner featured a step by step discussion of how to go about getting unemployment.

While I sat amongst the North Asheville homeowners, I talked to one person who had worried for two years straight when her son fought in Iraq. I talked to another who had survived Katrina. Handling this storm was small potatoes, they each assured me, compared to what they had already been through. 

Meanwhile, while my own neighbors ate, the discussion revolved around wavelengths we were on and the energies we were letting into our lives. We were not talking about physics. 

At both potlucks, people mentioned shock. People mentioned gratitude. 

The North Asheville folks served up four kinds of meat with a scant serving of peppers on the side. Amongst my downtown crew, the dietary restrictions could have made a Tolstoy novel. Keto, vegetarian, gluten free. I couldn’t keep track of it all, so I just served pancakes. 

The big adventure in my own gathering was my attempt to make syrup. I didn’t have any, but I figured all I had to do was combine brown sugar and water in a pot on the stove, and pretty soon that would be remedied. I even tossed in a dollop of vanilla. Only the best, for my disaster relief pancake party. The syrup, as it turned out, was not the best. Nor was it syrup. It turned into a hard sticky candy that stuck to the pot, and then the bowl, and then your teeth, if you ever made it that far. Eventually someone brought a bottle of real Vermont Maple syrup, and my guests were put out of their misery. My attempt sat abandoned in its little blue bowl. 

I’m going to make a confession now. I threw that bowl away. I looked at the candy, stuck firm to the opaque glass. I thought about the water, and patience, that would be required to unstick it. And then I chucked it. 

In the North Asheville potluck, the big event of the evening took the form of an uninvited car pulling up in the driveway. The hosts were jumpy. They had not seen their son since before the storm. He was a deputy, and had been sent to evacuate folks from a flood zone before a dam broke. After everyone had eaten, when we had dwindled down to a circle of about eight, we were blinded by the headlights. “It’s my son!” the woman beside me said. And smiles broke over our faces like cracked eggs. 

At each gathering, there was someone who had eaten almost nothing that day. For the North Ashevillians it was a well off forty-something. A tree had fallen onto his house, onto his couch, almost onto his head. For breakfast, he had nibbled on some ramen from his cabinet. Amongst my neighbors, it was a student in school for Chinese medicine. Our area was the first to get resources, but information about them was hard to find and the combined factors of Crohn's disease and stress had rendered him unable to seek them out. 

In both gatherings, everyone was shaken and dirty and quick to change the subject when someone asked how long until we got water. In both, when everyone had gotten a plate, and the conversation was flowing over and atop itself like rapids in a stream, there was a moment when the hurricane was irrelevant. When all my thoughts, which had been resting on the storm like birds come to roost, scattered and were free to roam. 

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10/5, 8 days after the storm

Several days into the storm, I went on what had become my morning walk, in pursuit of wifi and a way to be useful. I made it about three steps before I ran into my neighbor. I had met this particular neighbor three days beforehand, and so by this point we were of course old pals. We stopped to catch each other up on the 12 hours in which we’d been apart. 

“Do you have anywhere to be?” she asked. “You’re welcome to come for a cup of tea.”

I hesitated. Technically, I did have other obligations. I was committed to wandering around until I found an amassed group of people who might allow me to support them in the noble work of sorting Cheerios and Wheaties into separate piles. Perhaps they would even let me stack a mass of pinto beans into a neat tower! But, having no assurance that such an appealing opportunity would present itself, I allowed myself to be swayed by the promise of tea. Five minutes later I found myself on a rocking chair, selecting from an impressive array of loose leaf options. I had a view of my own porch, where I usually sit. I had never seen it from this angle. I rocked, and I waited, until my neighbor came to join me with two mugs and a single steaming teapot. A teapot! Can you believe it? I find teapots to be a source of great whimsy in any circumstances, but I was immensely touched to have one in this particular instance. In a world without water, allowing someone to dirty your dishes is the greatest love language of them all. And here she was, inviting me to sully not one but two liquid receptacles! We drank tea and discussed the politics around care for kids with autism. Well. She discussed. I listened. It was profoundly therapeutic for us both. 

In the midst of an emergency where it usually feels like we can do nothing, we both got to do something we were good at. She, an expert on autism care, did a beautiful job explaining the inefficiencies in current structures. I, if I really apply myself to it, can be an expert listener. And I learned that having no job, no gas, and no cell service is very conducive to applying myself. I asked perceptive questions and she gave nuanced answers. We sipped our tea and time passed by around us like a stream over a rock. I now have a newfound passion for autism education and a freshly rediscovered love for teapots. 

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10/2, 5 days after the storm

On Friday, the day the world blew sideways, I was supposed to babysit. The family lives an hour away, in Brevard. “Looks like the roads might be nasty,” they had texted me the day before, "Let's play it by ear.” For a couple hours after the storm had ended, I was still debating whether to go. “I don’t know,” I thought to myself, “could be dangerous.” I thought about how I’ve been wanting to take a trip to Spain to visit my friends, how this one night would contribute to my airfare. I sort of wanted the family to text me first, and then I would get the night off without having to feel lazy about it. I waited. 

It took a while before I realized I wouldn’t be getting a text. Nothing in or out, I had no service to speak of. It wasn’t until I took a walk when I began to understand that I wouldn’t be going anywhere for quite a while. And it was days later when I learned that there had been houses floating down the highway where I’d been thinking about trying to drive. 

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10/4, one week after the storm 

I am now able to check my phone. It’s not all it was cracked up to be. When I had no service and no gas, I was always bumping up against the limit of what I could do. I walked around and looked for places to volunteer. I hosted dinner for my neighbors. I was kind. It was not enough, but it was the clear maximum of what I was able to do. That was comforting.

But now I have my phone. Every few minutes someone sends me a fresh picture of devastation. I do not like it. The images of disaster multiply, vast and formless like clouds stretching out to shade the whole sky. 

In the time before my phone worked, everyone I ached for had a face. They had a time and place in my memory, like their own home in my mind. There was the student who came up to me asking where he could find water. He was on the sidewalk by the coffeeshop, I was feeling untethered when I saw him. The couple who stood behind the baseball field, trying to get a signal for hours. I was laying on a picnic blanket by first base, attempting to read my book, and I kept sneaking glances at them. I debated whether to ask if they knew about the food pantry a few blocks away. When I finally told them, they said “we need it, people over here are starving.” Then there was the gaunt woman who sat rocking herself by the side of a backwoods Barnardsville road, a man crouched beside her. A nurse asked her if she was ok and she shook her head no. She said “I don’t feel good.” I had just driven an all-terrain vehicle across a river when I saw her. 

Now that I have a phone, I am trying to process more people than I can count on my fingers or hold in my heart.  People devoid of dimension. Like the trash that still hasn’t been taken out, they just keep piling up. My head becomes a messy place; cluttered, uninviting. I am bombarded with posts and messages, pictures and statistics and stories. The notifications make their own kind of flood, and it’s hard to keep my head above water. The people on my phone don’t have a scent. I wasn’t struck by the way they carried themselves. They can’t see me if I smile at them. 

The details of someone’s solid form before me are the rough edges that give me something to hold onto. Without them, the suffering masses are too smooth. They slip out of my grip, and I feel guilty watching them fall.