Disaster Tourism

Feeling the way in the pre-dawn morning with a foot landing on the road that steadily rises into the valley, the earth beneath us unsettled and tense like a muscle recovering from undue strain. Another morning shrouded in mist where a world of disarray is unveiled as I run around downed trees and over powerlines, beside yards littered with personal belongings, dismantled furniture, trailers shifted from their foundations having slid into the creek.

And out of the mists looms the old rock gate, the threshold into the valley, as it has stood this lifetime and more. I pause. What lies beyond I can not say. Log jams of trees and stacked brush, washed out bridges, eroded banks. That I could guess at, but it was the creek itself that caused me to stop and draw breath. That creek in which as a child we once built dams, rock hopped, caught crawdads, that creek in which its banks may have shifted or changed and sustained development, but the creek itself unchanged all those years. Now it was as though a glacier had cut through the valley carving a new and deep run that bleached the stones and stripped away sediment leaving a new carved riverbed forever altered.

Yet, in just five days removed from the floodwaters the crew there had reinforced the banks and restored the washed out bridges. Piles of brush and tree boles lie in a heap in the old kickball field two stories in height.

Making the climb up the road by the dam to the lake framed by riverstone buildings that now has a sandbar in the middle of it marking the highwater, an island greater than the size of a small ranch house, and against the dam and the bridge stacks of brush and the lake itself a swampy moras. All this cast in that early morning grey light through the swirling mists like a vision of some dystopic altered reality, because how could this be? This sacred home so thin in its proximity to the beyond, a place that for this one lifetime had remained unchanged and constant, or so it would seem, was now forever altered. But that idea, a place unchanged, may only be a projection of a desire that there be something, someplace that remains as solid and unmoved as a mountain. Yet, that is not the way of it, not in this world, and can not be. For our only true constant is that we exist amidst an ever changing creation and it is ours to exist in the moment and to adapt to these shifts with acceptance and even remove. For these mountains and this place are of this world which was once set in motion around the sun and so became subject to time, and time is ever ticking and progressing, seasons change, and so comes rain and winds followed by calms and drought, mountains shift, they erode, what once were mountains that would cast shadows on todays Himalayas are now worn into rounded domes and balds with deep loamy valleys of moss covered river rock, or so it was. But now we have witnessed the true nature of a mountain.

Running around the lake, giving space to be in the moment and to feel, for I have attached much of myself, my memories, my identity, to this very place, I come around the earthen dam to see through the mist a livestock corral made up of horse trailers and tents with a line of pack mules feeding on hay with a driver making his coffee over a camp stove and another in dusty canvas Carharts and jean jacket stretching, both worn from days of hard riding. When I jog up to them I arrive as two people, for in that place as a kid on the 4th of July we would climb the greasy pole, and on summer afternoons play camp games, and I can arrive as that child and I can arrive as a man a little broken and caught in disbelief and in gratitude for the people there in that surreal moment, people who arrived to work tirelessly not only to bring aid and essential supplies, but to bring human contact to people who had been violently cut off in a time of need.

As a former mule skinner I stop and chat, exchange thanks, but they say that there is no thanks necessary, for them, like the rest of us, it was not a choice, it was a calling to be there that they could not leave unanswered.

Making way back down the valley I can hear the cough and stutter of an old pickup and from out of the rhododendrons a truck with Georgia tags, a Confederate flag, political and social opinions stuck to the windows and tailgate, and he stops, a wiry fellow with a grey beard and cigarette burning between his fingers, a cross hanging from his mirror.

“Which way to command central?”

“You may have passed it.”

“I come up from Georgia to help.”

I tell him I am not sure, but I had heard maybe that they were coordinating volunteers at the elementary school.

He nods, sitting there, truck roughly idling, looking up the road. “I come up here to help,” he said again.

I’m looking at him and I’m conflicted. Why is he here? What kind of work is he willing to do? He has no tools, no food or water in his pickup, the bed is mostly empty. There are motives, and then there are motives. One can justify the desire to witness such devastation, which is a strange human curiosity, by labeling their motives to be that of service. Some will arrive with illusions of playing some great heroic part of chainsawing people out of there homes, but the true work needed in those days was that of the grind of forming a human chain to shuttle supplies, or to cut up vegetables to throw on a grill, or to help carry buckets of water so that the elderly could flush their toilets. Was he willing to do that work? Are there conditions for his service? With his opinions on display will we have to listen to his musings on the current political/social situation for a few hours for whatever work he can provide? Will he be an emotional drain as well as require additional resources of food, water, and waste management?

Or maybe his intentions are true. Maybe he is resourceful. Perhaps he, like so many, saw the images of human suffering and felt he could contribute, but unlike so many he rose up off of his couch and hopped in his pickup to take action. Maybe he didn’t know any other way except to show up willing and able bodied.

And so I direct him to the downtown and I thank him for his compassion, because I have to believe in that moment that we all are wired for compassion, and that we can be very passionate about that compassion. I certainly concede that the ways we express our compassion may be compromised by our biases, our actions may not align with our intentions, that our actions may in fact be simply ill-informed, but that at the core of it, in our deepest being, most of us feel compassion towards others, and so I acknowledge the compassion in this very quietly spoken, confusingly confronting person who is up from Georgia to “lend a hand”.

With the mists having burned off we entered into a new phase, one a friend called ‘Disaster Tourism’. It came in full as I-40, the direct artery into town and the valley, opened a new flood gate for all those who had for a week witnessed from their televisions and media feeds heart wrenching images and felt a helpless urgency to engage in well intentioned action. These individuals with all their complex emotions and motives inundated the small town.

Some came in organized groups with an established supply chain of food, water, gas, and a clear directive and resources to contribute, bringing All Terrain Vehicles and trailers to deliver supplies to hard to reach people that were shut in and cut off.

Some came with the ability to serve thousands of people food daily. Some came with chainsaws. Some came to build shelters and tiny homes. Some came as a simple pair of hands and a willingness to do the menial tasks. Some were Veterans groups. Some were men’s groups. A lot were religiously affiliated. Some simply brought aid. Some also brought their beliefs and convictions which became points of controversy, on the one hand providing much needed resources as they evangelized to an already exhausted and vulnerable community.

Then there were others, the ones that just showed up, backing up the traffic at the working lights, creating confusion at the not working lights, and slowing down at points of devastation to rubber neck, pulling their phones out to document that they ‘experienced’ the devastation. They were witnesses from the inside of their cars before returning back down the mountain to their power and running water.

And that was where the moment became a moment of pause to consider the moral question and confusing dilemma. Here was a community that was given a unique opportunity, all be it at a significant cost, but an opportunity to step back from those constructs that divide us to work side by side, neighbor to neighbor, to cast away differences to help one another, and in ways to build new meaningful lasting connections, yet in less than a week outsiders brought with them reminders of those divisions. They flooded into a valley exhausted from effort, vulnerable with trauma, and with much needed help in exchange for displays that trigger the toxic energy of our times, and what’s more divert some much needed resources of food water and security while filling the town with traffic, noise, and waste.

On our street a mental health crises nearly turned violent in those hectic days and while the town hosted police units from across the south the local officer responded to us with a look of helpless exhaustion. “There’s only two of us pattroling on 18 hour shifts. All these other units are providing security to relief groups. What do you want me to do?”

And so by the end of that day I waved to a friend and he turned and went inside. “He’s tired and grumpy,” his wife apologized. “He just wants all these people to go away.”

Perhaps in reflection of the self reliant spirit of Appalachia one friend told me, “I didn’t ask for help. All I asked for was some gas and some bar oil.”

I don’t know. It suddenly became very complicated.