Our one-way town was devastated by floods and landslides after Hurricane Helene. But we are ‘North Carolina Strong’. We will go to the polls if only to honor our neighbors.
| Opinion Contributor
North Carolina residents vote early during hurricane cleanup
North Carolina residents are still busy cleaning up from Hurricane Helene, but are still making time to cast their votes.
Fox-Seattle
Each individual raindrop mattered as it added to the sum of what would become Hurricane Helene devastating floods.
For Americans living in a technologically driven age, our individual ballots may seem unimportant in the future confusing haze of electoral politics. Our local concerns can seem lost in the rush of fast-moving news cycles on issues that seem foreign or beyond our control.
But when we exercise our right to vote, we collectively, drop by drop, vote by vote, create momentum that changes and reshapes the political landscape. And just as every drop in the recent storm seemed insignificant, they all mattered and forever changed a little tourist town between Asheville and Chimney Rock called Bat Cave, North Carolina.
Bat Cave was a quirkily named storybook of a town with no traffic lights and where Valerie at the post office would always ask how you were doing or sometimes even tell you how you were doing, with the bills sure to find their way along the winding Lake Lure Highway to the small post office of the Bat Cave (which, by the end of Helene’s rampage on September 27, was four feet deep in mud and water).
The political chaos we saw in the larger world rarely reared its ugly head in the rural riverside village nestled along the Rocky Broad River.
Before Helene’s devastating extermination, Bat Cave was a place where people lived to avoid the clutter, traffic and complications of cities and suburbs.
The residents of the Bat Cave remain remarkably diverse – socio-economically, politically, racially and culturally. Many have lived among uniquely exposed cliffs and steep mountain nooks and valleys for generations. Others retreated or retreated to the rich array of trails, waterfalls and lakes that offer countless scenic gems, often overshadowed by the better-known tourist towns of Hendersonville, Asheville and Black Mountain.
Our survival was tenuous at best
Bat Cave was a place to be enjoyed for its diversity and the pervasive culture of kindness and acceptance that it fostered Hickory Nut Gorge a manifestation of American melting pot idealism.
Bat Cave was the kind of place where my neighbor Candy across the street would put out blankets and cots on her porch on the night of a storm, just in case someone on the river side of the street lost power or needed shelter or refuge.
At 7 a.m. on September 27, we went to her porch because it was the last and only high spot we could reach that wasn’t flooded or swept away by a landslide. We sheltered there, holding terrified pets and holding our collective breath for a few hours as the storm raged relentlessly. Watching the neighboring houses collapse under mudslides made us feel that our survival was tenuous at best.
While Dozens of people in our state died that morning our group of six survived and rescued most of our animals from homes and a community that had been washed away.
In the aftermath, we quickly realized that the beloved mountain town where we once sought refuge from the storms of city life was now in complete disrepair.
However, what changed my life forever was not necessarily the trauma of the next three days of trying to survive and escape what had become a devastated wasteland, but the undeniable and often tangible love of person to person and neighbor to person . -neighbour.
The flood took away everything from my life that I didn’t need. The flood left me with my life and everything (everyone) I really need.
Thanks to Helene, I may at some point forget the absolute core of human goodness – but never for long, because this catastrophe has literally restored my faith in Americans.
A disaster brings clarity and bridges any cultural differences
I have heard or read about these types of community revelations in other disasters, but have never actually witnessed them.
The absolute power of people bound together by crises clearly transcends political ideology, cultural differences, gender or any other socially imposed divide.
What I can tell you today, where previously I could only guess, is that you as a survivor or first responder would almost certainly feel compassion for your neighbor, no matter how differently you know – or don’t know – who they came from. you politics. You would also feel no separation, no hatred, no judgment, just a pure desire to save, help, or love your fellow American neighbor (or any human being) in a time of desperate need.
These are hidden truths that can be brought to light by anyone in the throes of tragedy.
And voting this election cycle can bring us all closer to those truths, regardless of our political leanings.
Casting a vote fulfills a responsibility to each other, even if in doing so we cancel out the negative vote of our neighbors. It is still a necessary part of maintaining the strength and well-being of our inalienable bond.
Bat Cave survivors declare that we are “North Carolina Strong” in our shared cultural DNA. We will find ways to be resilient and go to the polls, if only to vote in honor of our lost neighbors.
We choose to “be strong in the broken places,” as my dear friend and colleague Kris Brightbill taught me from Ernest Hemingway’s novel “A farewell to weapons.”
Whatever comes next, I will definitely cast my vote. Local election boards and other agencies have made it possible to find a new voting location and provided shelter for survivors like me. So I will be one of those humble droplets that join all of you in Tuesday’s flow toward our newfound freedom.
Blake Smith is a clinical therapist, long-distance runner, and resident of Bat Cave, North Carolina, where he lost his home and truck during devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Helene. He and his dog Rizzo are temporarily living with friends in the Asheville area.
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