I moved to Weaverville, NC, partly because I believed this was a safe place to live – no fires, hurricanes, or earthquakes. Whenever a storm blew through, the sacred Blue Ridge mountains encircled and protected us.

On September 26, that all changed.

It began with the rains…… a deluge so intense that water bounced upwards off the pavement and pummeled my roof. The downpour went on and on and on. As my house is on the side of a mountain, the water sloughed off and drained into the woods. Below me, I saw new streams forming and running through my neighbors’ yards. I felt a guilty sense of relief that I’d been spared.

That afternoon, the sky cleared, and I thought the hurricane had passed us by. The truth was that the flooding rain was an entirely different storm.

That evening Hurricane Helene swept through my world like a tornado. All night long gale winds howled, rattled windows and doors, and shook the house. Through the din, the explosive sound of trees cracking and falling could be heard.

Somehow, I managed to sleep through much of it. I suspect this was my body’s way of shutting down to cope with the trauma.

That morning, though the wind was still blowing, I went out on my deck. My backyard was strewn with trees—HUGE trees, including a magnificent oak an arborist had already soft-corded for protection. Several enormous pine trees had scratched the side of my house and were lying in piles three stories high on their sides. There was a strong smell in the air, unrecognizable at first—the smell of fresh-cut trees and pine needles.

I was in shock and had no idea of the extent of the damage, not just to my property, but to the world around me. It was all I could do to take in the devastation in front of me.

There was no power, but we still had cell service. I called my friend in New Jersey, and just before the cell service died, she remembers me saying, “I guess there’s nothing to do right now but meditate.”

An hour later, I walked out my front door into an almost unrecognizable landscape. Fallen trees were strewn across my road, and my neighbors’ driveways, Rain and Thomas, were entirely covered. I was afraid their house had been crushed.

As I climbed over and under tree trunks up their driveway, I saw them making their way down to me – and we cried. We were relieved that we were unharmed and devastated by the chaos around us. All these magnificent trees, these ancient giants, had fallen and saved our homes. They had made a supreme sacrifice.

For the next five days, all lines of communication were dead. Power lines, transformers, and utility poles were strewn across our roads like pick-up sticks. Cell towers had fallen across the tops of our mountains. There were no signs of emergency vehicles or any kind of assistance from the outside world.

No one was going to come bail us out.

My community came together in a remarkable way. With chainsaws, rakes, and saws, we cut down hundreds of trees and utility poles that had fallen across driveways and roads, trapping us in our homes. Volunteers from other areas showed up with bulldozers and heavy equipment to assist in clearing the debris off the roads. Within two days, we were able to get out and make our way down to the main road along Reems Creek.

Along Reems Creek was unimaginable destruction: houses partly submerged in water, vehicles overturned in the creek, bridges washed away, mudslides covering the road, and other parts of the road caved in. Transformers and wires dangled precariously from trees leaning over the road or draped like tangled ribbons across the pavement. People displaced from their homes wandered aimlessly along the side of the road. The creek flowed in new directions as if it was as lost and aimless as those it had displaced.

Our communities worked together to make the main roads passable, and immediately set up relief centers to support those most in need. I didn’t see a city or county vehicle for days, and the first ones to enter weren’t utility vans, but National Guard search and rescue trucks.

Initially, there was no cell service, so I had no access to the news or the outside world. Even when cell service was restored, it was limited to phone calls and texts—no data, apps, or hot-spotting the internet, all those high-tech conveniences we take for granted. I didn’t grasp the scope of the devastation, which was a blessing, as it was all I could do to address the next thing in front of me.

As a friend later said, I was transported to the time of one of my favorite childhood books, Little House on the Prairie.

Communication was passed from one neighbor to the next through word of mouth: where to find gas and propane, when and where to buy food, how to obtain drinking water and supplies, which roads were blocked, and where we might go if we chose to evacuate.

I chose to stay.

By the second day, we were all on a first-name basis and developing a makeshift survival plan for the community. One neighbor offered the water in his swimming pool for us to use to flush toilets. Others, like me, who had a generator, left my door unlocked so my neighbors could use the fridge and charge their devices. Many of us took turns attending to an elderly woman living alone who stubbornly refused to leave. The children, freed from school, played together as if they were on holiday. Everyone with a chainsaw, hatchet, or shovel was at work.

The days and nights blurred together, and my sense of time was – and still is -altered. What governed my day was light and darkness and…running my generator in five-hour shifts. That generator, which had previously intimidated me, became my best friend. Every morning at 6:30 I’d haul it out of my garage, check the oil and fuel levels, and power it up. I’d go back to bed to cuddle with my kitties until daylight.

Then, my day would begin.

Everything we typically do in 30 minutes—wash face and brush teeth, use and flush the toilet, prepare food for myself and the kitties—took four times as long. Flushing water was carried from the garage to the bathroom, washing water to the kitchen and bathroom sink, and drinking water poured into a kettle. Breakfast was prepared on the two-burner camp stove set up on my deck. Washing dishes was interesting: Try washing using less than 1/2 gallon of cold water!

At noon I’d turn off my generator, wheel it back into my garage, and run errands. The secret was to find a gas station within range of cell service, so while waiting in the gas line for an hour, I could call friends and catch up on texts. Next was a trip to purchase canned tuna, salmon, and chicken in case my generator ran out of fuel. Then another stop to fill empty bottles with water, or gather supplies for my neighbors. I was exultant when Ace Hardware opened its doors so we could fill propane tanks to run our generators!

By five, I’d be back home to start up the generator, and begin preparations for dinner and… my 1-inch sponge bath. It was best to have that before dark when temperatures dropped. I won’t go into the details, but the best part was the grand finale when I’d rinse with cold water, yelling or singing loudly to mitigate the shock.

I have never felt so alive and in the moment.

There was no space to dwell on the past or worry about the future. I simply did the next thing in front of me to do. Sometimes that looked like searching for supplies for neighbors, checking in on the elderly woman next door, weeding my vegetable garden, hauling debris, responding to a warning sound from the generator, and stopping to ask a repair person for status report on utility services.

I was in flow with and part of everything. Time stretched and morphed. I lost track of the days and was dialed into a different sense of timing.

Miracles and synchronicities became a regular occurrence.

  • At the moment I realized that a still-standing tree threatened to fall on my house, an arborist showed up with his crew and arranged to clear the debris and take down the tree.
  • One night, when my beloved Bodhi didn’t come home, I prayed and heard a voice say, “Mama, I’m okay.” Two minutes later, he was brushing up against my leg.
  • Disaster crews flew in from Idaho and Michigan to restore our power lines. After 18 days without power, when they came to my door to offer to turn on my Main, I burst into tears and hugged them.
  • It is a miracle to have water for bathing and washing dishes, to turn on a switch and have light, or hear the sound of the heat pump!

This has been a time to surrender control – which I never had to begin with – and discover that the universe has always been ready and waiting to take care of me.

A time to recognize how resilient, capable and physically strong I am. My body has never felt healthier despite weight loss and less sleep.

I was, and still am, deeply happy. At the time of this writing, we now have power, and after six weeks, we have unlimited cell service and intermittent internet!

I feel like I’m in the Bardo – a vast space of potentiality between what was before and what’s to be. You might call it a portal.

One thing I know is that there’s no going back to ‘before’—the pressure, the need to do, get it (whatever ‘it’ is) right, to be separate and independent.

As everything unessential drops away, I now see that all that matters – or has ever mattered – is love.

As for the future, who knows? I’m excited to find out.