This Is Bad
I’ll be offline the next couple of days as I make my way up to our family’s place in Western North Carolina. I’ve gotten a lot of on-the-ground reporting from people in our neighborhood on Highway 80 and, well, it’s bad.
Our house is not fancy. It’s not big. But from the back deck, we can see the whole Black Mountain range including Mount Mitchell, just a handful of miles due west. From the side deck, when it’s not too dry, there’s a little creek that sounds as cheerful as birdsong.
That creek. That creek was a raging torrent by last Thursday, well before Hurricane Helene proper came through. My mom was staying there, and took some pictures. We’ve seen it high before (2004, when two hurricanes came through back to back was crazy). We’ve never seen it this high, and we’ve had the place for over forty years.
Mom called Thursday night. She was scared, and Mama don’t do scared. We discussed moving her car to the top of the neighbor’s driveway as we had some trees that we suspected would come down. But it was too late for her to get out at that point, after we’d already gotten 10" of rain in just a few hours.
We didn’t hear from her again, not for awhile. Power went off to the area around 2am Friday. We knew it was bad. A couple of neighbors on the other side of the river that had generators and Starlink started reporting in. Houses that had withstood previous floods washed into the Toe River. Others collapsed. Mudslides. Road in our neighborhood washed out.
Sometime Saturday my sister received a group text from an unknown number stating that everyone on our road was ok but of course there was no power, water, cell coverage, etc. We assumed that since they had her number, Mom must have been with them.
By Saturday afternoon, it was clear that this was a widespread disaster the likes of which we’d never seen. It may actually be the most widespread weather-related devastation that we’ve seen in the US, at least in the last 100 years.
Mom finally got a call out to us Monday. She had been standing in the house looking out the back when she saw a mudslide heading towards her. Boulders tumbling, whole trees sliding down, right for her. She was too shocked to move.
Somehow it stopped before reaching the house — maybe the bridge over the creek for our driveway held it up. But it dammed up the creek, so my understanding is that we’ve got a crawlspace (which goes from inches of clearance on one end to 7' in the back) full of water and mud.
Mom got out in her car (thank Dog we thought to move it) and was able to get to her little RV parked a few miles away. Right where it was reported that they got 29.5 inches of rain in 48 hours. But her RV was fine.
We won’t have power for weeks, if not months. We will likely have to have a new water line dug. Everything in the house is going to mold. I’ll take pictures this weekend, if I can get in, and we’ll salvage what we can (Mom has already filled her RV with stuff). We’ll assess the damage and what will likely need to be repaired (almost certainly the deck, which my uncle built, and the siding, which we just had replaced).
Then we will likely just close it up for the winter and walk away for awhile. And help Mom find someplace to live for… a year? Two? I’m not sure she’s even going to want to go back.
My father passed away a dozen years ago. There is so much of that house that ties me to him. He spent his last few years there, tooling around in his power chair, watching our Tar Heels play basketball, entertaining family and friends with crazy stories. He died in the great room. We spread his ashes in the creek beside the house. We’re not fucking giving it up.
We are so incredibly more fortunate than so many people in our beloved mountains. Mom is alive and unharmed. We have other houses. We can take some time to set things right again.
Others are dead, or their lives wiped out, or their livelihoods. Buildings where we bought art, swapped stories, drank beer — gone into the river or so badly damaged that they won’t recover. And they took artists and small business peoples’ life works with them. Families are homeless, jobless.
We love Asheville and Blowing Rock. But our mountains are so much more than those two places. Generations of people have lived there — not always well, but it was by God their home. And they are hurting.
I don’t write this for pity. We’ll be fine. But do, if you can, find a way to help other folks. Donations to the Red Cross are always appreciated. Local organizations, like the South Toe Fire and Rescue, who started house-to-house searches while the rain was still falling, are worthy of support. They have literally saved lives.
And when we find our way to whatever the new normal looks like, come up for a visit. Spend some money in Burnsville or Spruce Pine or Little Switzerland. Try a local IPA, buy some local crafts. And if you’re inclined, pray.
Anton J Pierce is an award-winning erotica novelist. His third book — Jenny and Mitch Try It All — was recently published on Amazon. His first two novels were monthly Star Recommendations from the All The Filthy Detail podcast. Check them out! You can find him on X at @antonjpierce and on Bluesky at @antonjpierce.bsky.social and at Anton J Pierce on Amazon.
