Kim Trevathan is Compass’ outdoors columnist. He is the author of several books and a 2019 inductee into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame, and a retired professor of writing and communication at Maryville College. He recently moved to Asheville, N.C.

Under normal circumstances, Asheville, N.C., is offbeat and surprising, with a distinct personality as towns go. In the wake of this natural catastrophe — historic, generational, biblical, pick your apocalyptic adjective — life here has risen to high levels of surreal tragedy. 

Walks through the city reveal the despair and determination of Asheville residents.

Since torrential rains and the arrival of Helene on Friday, Sept. 27, I’ve been walking through neighborhoods and funky commercial streets like Haywood Road to measure the scale and impact of the catastrophe, to try to make some sense of it.

A Drive in Ignorance

I did take a drive on the Saturday after the storm, to Aston Park for a tennis match. Without cell service, I couldn’t contact Kyle, my opponent, so I thought I should show up in case he did. I knew the storm had hit hard because of all the rain, the blown down trees, and the loss of power and cell service. I didn’t know much more.

This was a drive full of anxiety and apocalyptic wonder. The first gas station at the Interstate-240 exchange on Haywood Road in West Asheville was clogged with cars, horns blaring, drivers shouting from open windows.

A mile farther down, under the West Asheville River Link Bridge, the river carried large objects that didn’t belong there — buildings and piers and dumpsters and vehicles. People lined the bridge rail taking photos of the wide brown water of the French Broad, spread out far beyond its banks in a bubbling, churning mess.

There would be no tennis. The courts were strewn with branches and leaves, the windscreens shorn from the fences, billowing in the breeze. Big oaks were uprooted and snapped off in a path that tore down a hillside and along a creek. Sensible Kyle had stayed home.

On the way back, on multi-lane Patton Avenue, driving had a Wild West vibe. At dead traffic lights, people charged through without waiting their turn, ignoring the protocol to treat the intersections like four-way stops.

I was glad to make it back to our West Asheville neighborhood and as soon as I turned on the radio and learned of the dire situation, I felt bad about my little trip. Please don’t get on the roads, Blue Ridge Public Radio (WBPR) said; let emergency crews and law enforcement do their job. Leave the roads clear for search and rescue to help those most in need.

Walking the Dog

After that, I stayed on foot, saving gas, which was precious. I walked our neighborhood, a hilly collection of curvy, narrow streets lined with fields and creeks and woodland full of deer, squirrels, songbirds, and at least one bear that raided our neighbor’s bird feeder. 

The dwellings range from newish two-story resort-like dwellings to centuries-old low clapboard houses heated by fireplaces and overgrown ruins that look vacant.

Now, after the storm, many walked their dogs, like I was walking my Maggie. People cooking meals on their porches asked for news. They wanted to know how we were doing. They said things like, “Hang in there.”

Neighbor Interactions

The morning of the big winds — Friday — a locust tree 60 feet tall released its roots and fell across our road, its crown descending upon our driveway and resting against the hatchback of my car. I lopped off the limbs and found not one scratch.

Two hours later, a neighbor in a pickup cranked a chainsaw and started cutting up the tree. A virtuoso with the saw, he had the road and our driveway clear in 15 minutes. No charge.

Two other neighbors arrived to help me stack the branches. The next day, a man who described himself as the neighbor up the road in the lavender house with the chickens, asked if anyone had claimed the locust. He sawed it up and took it home in installments, loading up his hatchback.

Beth and I took a walk Saturday afternoon. A woman leaning on her porch rail above us asked for news. We told her what we knew from WBPR —  horrific flooding, no cell service, boil your water before drinking — and she said this: “I wonder if it’s a cyber-attack and they’re not telling us.”

“No,” Beth said. “It was a tropical storm.”

We gave her our address, just down the road, if she needed anything. 

Sunday, I ventured farther from my neighborhood to a little street that seemed untouched by the disaster, neat little houses with big gardens and the biggest, oldest oak trees around, just a few limbs down. 

The quiet, idyllic street made me think about luck — good and bad. I was grateful we had been spared, that the ridge above our house didn’t collapse, that no tree crashed down on our house.

Storms like this one make you think differently about the joys of living in the shade of big trees, near flowing creeks and rivers.

A Quest for Goods

Monday, Day 4, I ventured on foot to Haywood Road in search of goods. 

Most businesses took only cash because they could not process cards, but Beth had seen West Side Market open and heard they might accept a card. Haywood resembles the Old City in Knoxville. It has a bit of everything: an anarchist bookstore, a shop named House of Black Cat Magic (no dogs allowed), a bunch of coffee shops and restaurants including the famous Biscuit Head, bars, a tearoom, an embodied wisdom center, a police station, a fire station, some churches and tattoo parlors, and of course breweries.

Most restaurants were closed, but the bookstore was giving away water to anarchists and others. And people crowded around the closed library, heads bowed over their phones, for the wi-fi.

Damage to the Craven Street Bridge in Asheville, N.C. (Kim Trevathan photo.)

West Side Market was dark and without power, its shelves depleted, but I found a bottle of wine and some beer. Checking me out, the worker at the register didn’t judge, and he wrote down my credit card information to charge me later.

Heading back toward Patton Avenue, where I’d heard an ATM was working, I passed a pageantry of humanity in various stages of euphoria and despair. 

A woman asleep on the lawn of a church, her palm outstretched, would awaken with the gift of three cigarettes in her hand. A white man with dreadlocks that hung past his knees talked to an electrician outside a ganja dispensary. A fire truck whooshed down the busy street, sirens screaming. A few restaurants were open, and the grocery — an Ingles — had a line out its door. Cash only.

The ATM Quest

Walking downhill at Patton, everything amped up, and I was mostly alone as a pedestrian. More cops and firemen motored toward something bad. Some of the traffic lights had come on, but it was harrowing to cross those six or eight lanes on foot, a dodging sprint through idling traffic toward the Wells Fargo Bank, where I waited in a line of 50 or so at the ATM.

One guy announced that he needed a thousand dollars out of the machine and that’s why he was inserting his card repeatedly in an attempt to get around the cash limit. He wore flip flops and needed a pedicure. The whole line tensed up as he overstayed and finally gave up trying to beat the limit.

People talked into their phones: they were fine, they said, and many roads were closed, preventing them from leaving town. A couple of paunchy middle-aged guys displayed sheathed knives in their belts, as if expecting trouble at the ATM.

Back at home after a seven-mile trek, I texted my friends outside the disaster zone to say that I’d gotten cash, candy, beer, and wine. I told them I was at home now scooping water out of the creek to flush the toilet. They were thinking about me, they said. They hoped we were okay. Could they do anything? How could they help?

We were “fine,” I said. On the porch we cooked with butane on a camp stove. At night we stumbled around with head lamps. It was like camping, I told them.

Listening to the News

For the first few days, before the power came back, we sat in our cars charging phones and listening to radio news and local government briefings. 

We got to know the officials: the sheriff who tallied the deaths, 72 in Buncombe County as of this writing; and the county officials who told us where water would be distributed, who thanked all who were cooperating and pledged to keep working around the clock until they got the power back on and the water running.

The water guy, an assistant city manager, was the most uncertain about fixing things. They couldn’t even get access to two of the broken-down water treatment plants, he said.

Disaster phrasing began to sound familiar. Patience please, they said. Everybody was coming together as a community. Help is coming soon. We’re making progress. People are suffering. We’ve never seen anything like this flooding. Not since 1916.

The AM radio station gave more voice to frustrations. Please don’t ask a bunch of questions to city workers trying to do their jobs. If the gas station tells you can only put $20 worth in your tank, don’t argue.

Imprecise language and cliches mounted as people attempted to articulate complex concepts — like the water guy — under duress and sleep deprivation. 

Restoration of water services would be “incremental” and would take weeks, he said. Somebody said “schematics” when he meant “semantics.” Somebody said “pacific” meaning “specific.” Incidents turned into “incidences.”

Reporters’ questions about where the water was coming and when it would arrive became as tiresome to us, the listeners, as it was to officials being asked.

Tuesday night, the power came back on. Beth made a grocery run to Ingles on Wednesday, Day 6. There was no dairy and no meat, except for 50-pound bags of ground beef and slabs of ribs. She got coffee, which we needed most of all, and the other things we wanted to eat.

A Tour of the Arts District

On Thursday, Day 7, I planned to walk down Haywood to the Arts District on the river, about four miles away. Most of Haywood, in West Asheville, appeared almost normal. Garbage trucks were picking up trash. More businesses were opening.

Correspondent Kim Trevathan cooking on a camp stove on his porch in Asheville, N.C. (Photo courtesy of Kim Trevathan.)

Gas stations were busy but not under siege, as before. More food and water was being given out, for free, not just at official places like the public library, but at restaurants like Early Girl.

The river told a tale of woe, difficult to capture in photos and words. Now back in its banks, at a normal level, the evidence of its rising was everywhere — ruins of businesses being cleaned out, trash in the trees, trees broken and tossed like rags, broken concrete and bent metal light posts.

I only saw a few other people on my walk down Riverside Drive. They were taking pictures. 

A couple had just arrived home from France and said they got more information on the storm overseas than Western North Carolinians were getting. They pointed out a place they used to frequent, Smoky Park Supper Club. It was washed out and in ruins, though not swept away since it was built of heavy shipping containers, the man said.

The few others I met just shook their heads and said something like “sad” or nothing at all. I can’t think of a better word than “desolate” to describe the riverfront and the mental state of the lost souls wandering around looking at it.

Cleaning all of it up would take much labor and time. Craven Street Bridge was impassable, one end of it torn open by the river to reveal what looked like a water or gas line.

Back in my neighborhood after the 10-mile hike, I passed a house that had received a huge “Hello Fresh” shipment, empty boxes filling up their small yard.

“Need some food?” asked a woman.

“No thanks.”

“Need food?” a man at the same house asked.

“No thanks.”

Refusing the offer made me feel better about things. At the same time, we know that people in more remote areas, outside the city, are still gridlocked, some without power, lacking water and food and other necessities.

Back at home Beth had brought home coolers full of drinking water. We were fine and we would be fine. We considered leaving town to stay with my family in Western Kentucky. Many of our Asheville acquaintances were finding roads that took them elsewhere.

But after a week of dealing with it, of bearing witness, it seemed a bit of a betrayal to just up and leave so we could take showers, do laundry, and get wi-fi at home. It seemed important to stay here and counter keyboard warriors politicizing the storm with pronouncements from afar that had no mooring on the ground, where people were suffering and trying to help each other out.

There would be more walks. I’d just moved to Asheville in June and was still acclimating myself to its eccentric layout, its ridge and valley landscape, part of its beauty but also part of what made the heavy rains so devastating. 

There’s an engaging strangeness to this town that I love; I hope that 17 inches of rain hasn’t destroyed it, that the rebuild retains the town’s warmth, intelligence, and originality.