By Matt Mittan
It’s been just over a year since Hurricane Helene tore through our region, and through the community of Swannanoa Valley that I have called home for nearly 30 years. It’s been just over a year since the creeks and rivers I knew by heart carved new channels, washing away the paths and formerly sturdy banks that I have walked through half my life.
The flood took away a lot more than homes and roads. It stripped away the familiar rhythms that had become part of who I am, part of the history I had created with my now grown children, and turned places that had been the center of laughs and memories with friends into places of terrible loss of life and traumatic violence at the hands of Mother Earth. Because those natural places were the cornerstone of my reflection, rejuvenation and inspiration – I have spent the past year trying to find a new balance with nature and within myself.
In those first months, I didn’t have words. Every trip down the road felt like passing through a ghost story, where the faces of friends I lost would stare into my soul. The mud, debris and broken timber hid feared findings that I never wanted to risk finding. So… I set my pen down, thinking maybe silence was the only honest thing to offer for a while.
But seasons don’t ask our permission to keep moving. They roll on, unmoved by our human deliberations. As spring grew into summer and summer faded into fall, something subtle began to stir within me. I noticed patches of green poking through the raw gravel bars where forests used to be. Some animals started to emerge from the shredded forests and quiet eddies that had formed below new shelves of stone welcoming birds to bathe and drink. The songs of songbirds had returned, tentative at first — like they, too, were testing whether it was safe to sing again. I rejoice in their presence, splashed with a taste of grief because there are still so many scars to remind us of the losses we’ve endured. I suppose that’s how it will be for a while.
It’s easy to long for what was. For the old routines, the same bends and shoals, the comfort of things we thought were permanent. The reliable fishing holes that took us years to find, and then perfect our approach. But maybe permanence was never the point. Maybe rivers and storms are just reminders that life itself is a moving body, reshaping, redirecting, finding new courses when the old ones are blocked—sometimes violently.
When you cut to the chase, it now falls on our hearts to decide how we adjust, or not, to those realities. It’s only been the past couple months that I have started to move on from the natural losses of the storm. That doesn’t mean I don’t still feel the losses. It means I’m focused on what comes next, not what was.
I see it in my neighbors too. Folks rebuilding homes on higher ground. Businesses who have survived, making the adjustments that the times require. Farmers prepping new crops in fields that flooded. Volunteer crews clearing debris from waterways and replanting streambanks. There’s grief, and there will be for a generation to come. But there’s also hope, perseverance and grit.
I would argue that grace for each other, grace for ourselves, grace for this land, and remembrance for those that we lost are the cornerstones of what allows us to reshape, redirect, and find new courses as individuals and as a community. We are not severed from this land, we are a part of it. We too will grow new roots.
Matt Mittan is owner of Serenity Outdoors Guide Service and Owner of Biz Radio. He also co-Hosts Matt & Michele Outdoors, an outdoor themed travel radio show. Learn more at MattMittan.com