Glowing Pockets of Light in the Rubble

Notes from the Forest's Edge October 1st, 2024

Since Storm Helene ravaged these mountains the edge of the forest has become dangerously entangled with the human world. Tress are wrapped in power lines, shoved through roofs and thrown across roads.  The rivers left what we considered to be their domain, extending their debris filled, rapid flow, deep into buildings, swallowing roads and demolishing bridges. Our illusions of safety swept away with the 300-year flood. 

Hunched into our fragile structures we watched the trees bend and swoop around us as the rain loosened their foundation soil. The wind swirled the clouds in unfamiliar patterns as my stomach churned with fear. Nothing to do but sing my prayers and try to sooth the dogs. Our animals in the 120-year old barn up the hill weighing heavily on my heart.

The storm veered east as it approached our stretch of the Blue Ridge, our farm little impacted, as the barreling winds continued to wreak devastation around us. As it cleared I could hear the crickets again, their electric singing eery as the unusually warm air continued to circle. The light a grey-green of some sea world not of these mountains.

We spent only a day without power, moving with the still distant sun, starting to gather the windfall of Black Walnuts, acorns and new logs for growing mushrooms. Checking on loved ones with the gas left in the truck we began to grasp the extent of the carnage.

Driving over electric lines spaghettied across the road dodging huge trunks laid down on the asphalt we made our way into Asheville to make contact we dear ones we know were in worse shape than us. The downed lines at the end of their tiny gravel road had been draped over the bizarrely upright road sign allowing us to drive under and up the deeply rutted road. More power lines across the top of the first house then snaking around both their cars ensuring they weren't leaving. A large Maple lays across the next roof, it's roots still anchored in the hillside as the weight of it's trunk cleeves their house in two. Another huge White Pine now across the road with a power line wound around it, our friend's house behind it.

We exchange teary hugs and wide eyes as we fill each other in on the news. Their house is blessedly intact and they are busy making soup for all their neighbors. They have a gas stove that's still working. People have brought what food they had so a giant concoction can be simmered into some feeling of safety.

As we cut a tree off the roof of their outbuilding they get a fire going in the yard, a beacon of home, of gathering together in a way now unfamiliar in the frazzled city. From the roof the smell of wood smoke brings me to a multitude of ceremonial fires, back to my prayers, my gratitude for life. My friend's mother, from an old Scottish Borders family who emigrated many generations ago, stands outside the house as the sun drops behind the ridge, and fires up the bagpipes to let the neighbors know the soup is ready. The breath of her ancestors who survived flowing through these old pipes into our ears as we continue to live.

She played the pipes last month at our wedding. My tears flow as she now plays for these frightened, hungry people in this suddenly very new world.

If you are still there dear reader, if you have internet connection, please share with us a story of this storm? What glowing pockets of light have you found among the rubble?

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Notes from the Forest Edge is a bi-monthly exploration of the liminal space between human and forest consciousness, rooted in a small farm in the Southern Appalachian mountains.