Things began to catch up to me a bit today.
Not sure what the clinical term for what’s happening and I’m certain it’s not just happening to me. Shell-shocked is what I’d call it. Is when the actuality of what you’ve seen catches up with the reality of your mind and then your heart.
The sheer devastation that we are surrounded by is inescapable. It’s our life here now. You wake up and after the fog clears...you begin to hear choppers flying overhead. But I should also be more clear here...depending upon where you live...you may not be looking at war zone surroundings...but it’s unmistakable that it’s whispering all around us. You can feel it hanging in the air.
FB is loaded with posts about people loading up donations and heading this way. And please know...we are ALL extremely grateful for this...but what I’m referring to is the fact that WE are where they are headed. It’s a whole different feeling to be on the other end of this...to be gathering donations and to head this way to help. It’s a whole other thing to be in it day after day.
I’ve been very fortunate to not ever have been in a war zone. But while speaking to a friend of mine tonight at a fundraiser here in Brevard to benefit Helene disaster relief he said, “I’ve been in a war zone and this looks a lot worse.”
This is what the Green River gorge and the Green River Cove areas near Saluda, NC look like. Houses just gone. They were there a week and one day ago...but they’re not there now. The road was there a week and one day ago...but it’s not there now. (let me clarify...it’s not like the road was damaged...and can be repaired. No. It’s gone. There’s dirt and sand and mud where the road was before.
The map we create in our minds of areas we travel in and out of every day...these maps we rely upon and we rely upon the world around us to mirror these maps...until they don’t and suddenly what we are looking at doesn’t match out mental map.
I saw imagery today of places that I should have recognized, but didn’t...apart from maybe a smidge of remaining road. Example: Oh shit...that was the put-in! That was where we started our whitewater kayaking journeys and the parking lot should be there..but it all looks eerily different. Because the land is forever changed.
It’s almost like someone used the weather as a weapon to declare war on the land. Which also makes no sense at all. The natural terrain has forever been changed here. Places we once knew and went to for spiritual soul-filling exchanges...are forever changed. It’s like a family member has been harmed...and wounded...and exchanged for something unrecognizable.
How does one move forward through this? Some days feel like three steps forward and some days feel like four steps backward. I can attest to how we get through this. It’s the people that get us through this. Hugs and listening and talking and just simply sitting and staring out into the sky. We hold each other up. We cry on each other’s shoulders. We rant. We rave. We breathe.
Damn this mess. Nothing easy about it. And it affects us all.
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