Rise Up
There were certain logistics to be considered. Foremost, self-sufficiency, to not be in a position to need anything from anyone. Enough gas to get in and get out, and with reports of shortages as far out as Greenville, SC I reached out to friends to get an idea of where one could fill up before climbing the mountain. Charlotte was the last reliable source, but to be sure I needed to carry enough to fill the tank over again.
Then the route. On Saturday all roads in were blocked by landslides, washed out roads, or from trees and debris. NCDOT declared “All roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed. No one should travel into Western North Carolina.”
Yet a call came through from a cousin, I 26 to 240 around Asheville was open to I 40 east, from there a straight run to Black Mountain. Then friends who evacuated made it out on I 26 from Hwy 25. But could you travel against advisories, despite public officials decrying people making their way in? It was important to not end up a part of the problem, broken down or out of gas on the side of the road. So I waited until I had an all clear from a reliable source, a blessing if you will.
And so packed with camping stoves, prepared food, water, and gasoline we waited. But among the inventory there was no shotgun riding alongside me. A very intentional decision brought out by very straightforward questions. Who are you going to be once your ideals are tested by uncertainty, chaos, and struggle? Who are you in that challenging moment when your spoken ideology will be expressed as values? That moment is when we define ourselves so that others may see who we are, and who you will remember years from then when sitting quietly in your safe home.
Sure, being blessed and cursed with an over imaginative mind I could see visions of armed radical militia groups in comically poor fitting un-uniform fatigues yet armed with whatever assault rifle they found on sale from Walmart hi-jacking our supplies to run off to whatever group or community they aligned themselves with. But should that be the case what was really at stake? Would I stand ready to defend with a deadly weapon? My presumed right to say who gets food and water? Am I so poorly equipped with wit that a shotgun might speak louder than my truth? In the comfort of our security, it may seem somewhat whimsical to create such a scenario, a little extreme if you will. But in the days to come this was a moral question that at some point in time or another everyone had to come to terms with, and a lot of people looked confused and weary, pleading with themselves and saying, “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
All this flooding my mind with a heart beating steadily against my chest counting breaths and trying to fool myself that there could be sleep, checking the illuminated dial of the watch against the darkness, bargaining for just a few hours of rest when at 11:30 we said “OK,” and were up and dressed, and at the stroke of midnight she waved me off as the truck pulled out into the night, the heavy rain laden clouds and intermittent lightning flashing in the not so distant west, to drive through torrents and long dark uncounted hours measured in cups of black coffee, calculating fuel consumption as the landmarks of swollen rivers, stateliness, interstates merging, and towns come and gone marked progress. Then the ominous sky lighting in gray overcast clouds as the last of the showers passed through around Charlotte amid the morning rush of traffic.
But by Shelby, NC the last reliable gas station and the clouds broke with the Blue Ridge in the distance with a warm and cleansing sun casting out light on the sunlit muddy fields before climbing the mountain. There were signs of the storm, but it wasn’t until coming into the Asheville basin that you could truly begin to see the scope of what the last week had wrought with creek beds washed clean of silt down to their rocky bottoms as if revealed by retreating glaciers, and plains of mudded fields and ruined crops. Trees downed reaching into the shoulder, exits and rest areas blocked off and closed.
Then turning off at the airport cars 100 deep lined up to the few gas stations with power, traffic of evacuees making their way out, going east, and the road covered in dry mud and silt as I turned onto Hwy 25 where darkened lights turned into 4 way stops and flooded out parking lots where shifts of asphalt were lifted and moved to the creek banks, trees on businesses, cars moving slowly and cautiously, people walking and riding bikes on some critical errand with determined and at times vacant looks about them as others pushed absconded shopping carts about on the roads, whatever Monday morning routine there once was on an indefinite hold.
Turning onto I 40 East with the Craggy range and the Black Mountains beyond on a cool blue morning the way was dusty, but clear into the Swannanoa Valley where you could see down into the devastation where tree flows damed against questionable bridge pilings. A once verdant valley baking brown with mangled dead vegetation, and as I was to later learn the dead themselves, as the sun climbed higher on that third morning removed from the storm.
The 6 hour drive had taken 10 hours beginning in uncertainty, my consciousness ranging from exhaustion to a high state of alert recalling what was about, and waves of emotions welling from the inside allowing moments to pull off and catch a breath, but as I turned off onto Exit 64 onto a barren Hwy 9 to drive under the muddy underpass, the emotions then overflowing as I could see for the first moment the ruin, the empty streets, the blacked out buildings, the river, the washed out tracks, and the people, oh the people, faces familiar as they milled about the little streets of downtown.
The universe speaks to those listening as the local station played Springsteen’s ‘City of Ruin’ on the crackly radio amid the grind and whine of the engine.
Town center and fire trucks set out on search and rescue, helicopters pulsing overhead, people on the street corner holding signs and spreading messages of love, small masses of people walking this way and that, the main road now as it may have been in another time, a mix of pedestrians, cyclists, and emergency vehicles, the fire station now a command center with a corral of porta potties. The church across the street with a parking lot set up with tents, people camped about, a line of people wrapped around the front waiting to be served by old ladies and young tattooed and pierced cooks serving side by side. And as I pulled in familiar and unfamiliar faces urgently waving me in as kids ran alongside beating on the truck’s side, white smiled and waving and cheering and it was like being drawn back 21 years before, when we entered the war torn city of An Nasiriyah where kids pushed into rubble lined streets to lay hands on those foreign uniforms and cheer, a sense of stability after an uncertain week of gunfire, airstrikes, and mortar attacks.
At the journey’s end faces of old friends lined up to receive the aid and for myself with tears and hugs exchanged with friends, some having been years removed since we last spoke, pulled apart by a pandemic, their personal losses and tragedies endured, milestones passed and celebrated in which we had watched from afar, rarely able to be present, socially distant through a disaster of other portions that separated communities, and now here witnessing a town pulling together unloading in 15 minutes what took us six hours to fill, and with gratitude and a resilient joy, and in that parking lot neighbors in service of one another, feeding one another, giving each other supplies and aid, and within minutes of delivering a generator the local coffee roaster had brewed coffee for the town that gathered in needed fellowship, as a town still processing, still suffering, and looking to heal.
Inside with a hug from our pastor the emotions flooding again. It wasn’t enough. We could do it again. There was more to be brought. Say the word, I would turn it around and go back. It just wasn’t enough.
“But you’ve done so much.”