For the Blue Ridge

A reflection in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

Oct 05, 2024

I’m ten years old and I’m spending the weekend in the mountains with my grandparents and my sister. We’re in a small cream room with forest green curtains. There are two queen beds covered in burgundy spreads. My sister and I watch TV atop one while our grandmother unpacks and our grandfather smokes a cigarette outside. The door of the hotel opens into a parking lot by a curving road, and my grandparents’ big champagne sedan is parked in front of our room. I remember the cracked pavement, the sun setting over the blue-tinted peaks, but I can’t remember if my grandfather snores.

The charter bus is loud. Unfamiliar voices yell back and forth over colorful, carpeted seats. Everyone’s excited as we leave the food court for the last leg of this seven-hour trip. It’s my first trip to camp, and I’m grateful for my twin sister beside me so I don’t look as lonely as I feel. I pull a matte gray CD player into my lap, and fit the spongy, padded headphones over my ears. I press the play button, and lyrics swirl. This was the summer of David Crowder and Jars of Clay, Micah Tawlks and Bradley Hathaway. Slowly the strip malls along the road disappear, the land becomes less flat, and bluegreen mountains appear in the distance. The summer sky is streaked with gray cloud that settles like a blanket over the ridgeline. We pass through downtown Black Mountain, and the kids on the bus cheer when when finally pull off onto the narrow road leading up to Cragmont. I’d been there a handful of times with the congregation of my church, but the energy is different this time. I don’t know how much my life is about to change, how much I’ll be influenced and inspired by the friends I make, the band I meet, the leaders who will treat me like family.

My sister yells for me to slow down as I run around the curve of road. My legs burn from the incline but I feel strong. I’ve just come home from Southeast Asia, and I’m trying to keep up the habit I’d picked up there. It’s warm, but it’s nothing like the oppressive humidity I just left. The leafy deciduous trees provide shade as we run. We don’t go far before we turn around and head back to our cabin. The man who gave us the keys was a twin, too, but he’d lost his. It’s the first time I’ve ever considered one of us dying before the other. I call my boyfriend when we get back inside and try to find a place that feels private. The cabin is gorgeous—a giant open room with two big beds in the corners and a recessed living area. Baskets near the bed are filled with old copies of The New Yorker, and it’s all I can do not to steal a few. I move outside, where there’s a creek just off the patio. I sit on the steps and put my feet in the freezing water. I dream that this place belongs to me, my very own private retreat in the woods.

I’m not from Asheville or the Western NC mountains, but I’m a North Carolinian: I was born and raised in the farmland of the coastal plain; I currently live in the foothills, and the mountains have been part of my life as long as I can remember. My grandparents drove there every fall until they couldn’t, and my family often went with them. My church regularly made trips to stay at a retreat in Black Mountain, where I would later attend church camp and become a camp counselor. Our middle and high school youth groups would drive up for ski trips—dozens of teenagers laughing with one another as we skidded down the icy Carolina slopes. Since my husband and I moved to Lake Norman, we regularly visit the mountains with our kids. We love exploring Asheville’s breweries and shops, always stopping in at East Fork, and wandering through the River Arts district. We love getting coffee in Black Mountain and lunch at Louise’s Kitchen. We go to Blowing Rock often, as it’s the closest to us now, where we eat downtown, go to the playground, and hike Flat Rock with the kids. For the past few years, my parents have driven up to pick apples at Sky Top Orchard. We stay at Lake Lure and spend the weekend swimming. In fact, we just did that a few weeks ago, so it’s wild to see it today, littered with branches and car parts, plastic containers and garbage, shingles and splinters of dock.

According to the Citizen Times, the Blue Ridge Parkway received 16 million visitors1 last year. The parkway is now closed indefinitely. Some 500 roads remain impassable, and some small communities (including Chimney Rock, which was a popular stop for many) no longer exist. These communities would typically be gearing up for their most popular tourist season, as the fall leaves turn golden throughout the western part of the state. So not only is the area devastated, but the remaining businesses will miss out on an entire season of income they rely on. No one will be coming to Appalachia as a tourist for a long time.

I’m a coastal girl, and I’ve been through my fair share of hurricanes. Fran wiped out the Scotch Bonnet Pier in addition to a stretch of homes along my local beach; Floyd had us out of school for over a week, scooping water from bathtubs to use our toilets; and Florence caused flood damage throughout our rural swamplands. These are the big ones, but we’ve gotten a lot of direct hits, ranking fourth in the nation for the most hurricanes. But I’ve never seen anything like this.

From various social media posts by friends, I saw a house—an actual house—floating down a street; I saw sanctuary floors covered with over six inches of sludge leftover from a mud slide—in the background of the photo lines smeared along the wall at chair height showed where the water and filth had risen and receded; I saw water flowing over a window into a home, right next to a desktop computer still covered in pens and post-its; I saw cars redistributed all over the valley—stuck in trees, along rivers, in branches and brambles on hillsides; I saw empty streets where store fronts once stood; and I saw a lake full of debris where deep blue-green water once lapped against a sandy bank. I think about my own house—the papers strewn about, the stacks of books, my great-aunt’s quilt, a throw from Scotland, the Hot Wheels and Spider-Man figures and wooden blocks and Magnatiles, the pillows and dog toys and carpets and puzzles and art supplies. I think of how many things we would have had to abandon to the flood had we lived there. Things that make our house a home. I think of how Appalachia is known for its artists, for its arts culture, and I think of all the paintings, the pottery, the drafts of poems and stories and songs—lifetimes of work—that have been lost to the water.

My heart is lead and my hands restless as I share photos of my homeland with friends in the Northeast and on the West Coast. I pull cans out of my pantry and take my three-year-old to the store to buy supplies after we drop off his brother at kindergarten. As the initial shock wears off, I can’t help but also think about Palestine, how the devastation we are witnessing over the past few days has been the reality of Gazans for over a year. Someone at church mentions the lack of access to medical care, tells of surgeries being rescheduled, shares stories of babies being born in Charlotte instead of Asheville, and all I see are the faces of strangers half a world away, strangers who have been crying out for rescue for months. It will be years before these mountains towns can rebuild and recover. It will be even longer for Gaza.

Even though I wish this response extended across borders, I am grateful to see the way communities are banding together. People all over the state are collecting supplies to send to the mountains. Personal pilots are using their own aircraft to help get supplies out. Both of our tiny local airports are organizing over a hundred flights a day, sending over fifty thousand pounds of supplies each day. Someone has been using his own team of mules to reach people who remain inaccessible, saddling each donkey with two hundred pounds of supplies.2 Fire and police and EMS teams from all over the region have been deployed for swift water rescues, emergency airlifts, and distribution of resources. People are collecting flood buckets for cleaning, and communities are working together to scrape mud off roads and floors.

This is humanity as it should be.

With love and hope,
Jenica

Joy & Jubilee

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