What Design Will We Choose?
“How are you?”
Usually we say “good” “great,” “fine,” whatever…
It’s not a question as much as a social pleasantry.
But for the past month. When we ask, we mean it. And we hold our breaths for the response.
Usually it’s, “Hanging in there”, “Doing okay”, “We were the lucky ones”, “Still figuring it out” or sometimes you just see water form on the lower eyelids.
At this point, if you live in Western North Carolina, you know the areas that are going to be devastated. You can brace yourself before driving through Swannanoa, or trying to navigate most any of the mountain roads in Avery and Yancey counties, or crossing over the mountain into Tennessee on the old Erwin highway. And now that you’ve seen it multiple times in multiple places, you can mentally and emotionally prepare yourself for encountering the devastation.
It’s harder with people. Most of us, the majority of Western North Carolina, had disruptions to work and home life, but we are living in our houses – even if they are patched and drying out – and we are hugging our loved ones and calling our friends – even if they left town for the time being. But then there are the 6,000 individuals who are living in FEMA funded hotels, and there are families and friends of the 101 people we lost, and the first responders who are still responding- and overwhelmed from the work and the task ahead.
This week it happened at Trader Joe’s. I got to the cash register and was ringing up my selection of groceries and 5 orange pumpkins that we would soon carve with our kids and close friends. I asked my check out guy how he was doing, and his eyes went dewy. He lives close to the Swannanoa River. The water came into his basement. A tree came down on his roof. He hasn’t been able to find anyone to help. He is worried about the rain. He is worried about his family. He is worried.
September 27th started a new journey. It started with adrenaline and action, followed by fatigue and admiration for the responders and the resilience of our community. Now, we are in a stage of acceptance - NOT the acceptance or resignation of what is, but the acceptance that getting where we want to be will take a long, long, time. In many ways it feels like we are starting over or, at a minimum, taking several steps back. And we are left asking, what’s the next right step?
Some of the challenges facing us are specific: how do we clean a crawl space and fix a room for a person who works six days a week at the cash register while his house and family still need help?! Others are more broad: How are we going to rehabilitate our rivers… or reverse educational loss for our kids… or reboot our economy… or bring back tourism… or provide enough temporary housing and long-term housing for our communities??
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I’m for efficiency and one of my fears is also that in a frenzy to rebuild, we will rush toward more mistakes or will miss opportunities to make our region healthier and more resilient than we were before the storm. When I was in school for a Public Affairs degree so many of the seemingly unsolvable issues we examined were that way because they were ‘downstream’ problems. Housing, crime, climate change, urban design we are playing clean-up for generations of other people’s decisions. And while we are not at carte blanche in Western North Carolina, we are as upstream as a place can get in 2024.
We are the headwaters for much of the southeast, the backbone of the Eastern Continental Divide. We suffered extreme loss to our community and infrastructure and with that comes pain and grief - along with the responsibility of putting our time and our attention, and the resources and support we receive, into rebuilding and improving our future. One of the twisted gifts of loss is that the darkness that currently feels empty also creates space to innovate and give our children a community that is not just rebuilt but reimagined.
Now is the time to put together a long-term recovery effort and team that will focus on not just rebuilding but reclaiming and redefining what it means to be mountain strong – making our region and everyone downstream more resilient with future trends and challenges in mind. Such as...
- Restoring our waterways AND rehabilitating our river banks with native trees and plants that create cooler, cleaner water, better habitat, and more absorbent banks for the floods of the future.
- Rebuilding roads AND accounting for future population and travel needs that include different modalities as well as wildlife crossings.
- Providing housing to the displaced AND also creating housing communities that address current density and cost issues for our service industry, teachers, health care workers and first responders.
- Supporting small businesses and tourism in a way that serves our full community AND underscores our independent shops and restaurants and artists and musicians and farmers, everything that makes us the creative, foodie, boozy, spiritual, artistic, outdoorsy, and agricultural enclave that we are.
- Implementing academic and community based enhancements for our Covid-Helene students that address learning loss AND integrates our hard-earned lessons into curriculum and life skills that helps us reach towards and beyond national averages.
Oh... and we need a day. Don't you think?! A holiday, a holy-day, a day to keep holding on, letting go – and letting loose. In another year, on September 27th 2025, we need time set aside to remember all that we’ve been through and to celebrate our resilience. We need a day to plug into the volunteer opportunities that will forever exist. We need a day to thank our first responders and healthcare providers and elected officials. We need a day to close down neighborhood streets, to fire up grills and talk to people and keep the tradition of hurricane block parties- and showing up for neighbors. We need a day to grieve that day that the rivers rose and the mountains shook and the forests fell and to commemorate the way that our people weathered it all like the worn Appalachian Mountains we call home and then looked around, rolled up our sleeves, and said, “Not Today.” We need a Not Today Day!
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When I walked outside the Trader Joe’s and into the parking lot, I was already making notes to connect my cashier with my friend Matt, who is using his skills to help people repair their homes for free. Or with my church which is housing volunteer construction teams for the foreseeable future. Or ‘The Red Truck Men’ they guys from out of town our neighbor told us about who are providing damage repair throughout Western North Carolina. The need is here. So are the helpers. And a large part of recovery will be seeing the field and quarterbacking our resources and volunteers to the people and places in need.
I was placing my groceries and pumpkins in the car, when a TJ employee pushing carts to the entrance said, “People finally started buying pumpkins. They just sat there forever, and now I think people in town are finally at a place where they can start carving. Makes me feel hopeful.”
We are at a place in Western North Carolina where we can start designing our future. What will we carve out for our children to see?
*Thanks to Mariah Gunter for the apropos WNC pumpkin pic.
(Our designs weren't as on point and the real bears ate most of our display.)