Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t, but I haven’t posted here for a couple of weeks. I don’t believe I’ve ever interrupted my regular rhythm of two posts a week before, except for when I was taking trips to Africa and was a little busy over there. 

This lacuna, as you can probably guess, was due to Hurricane Helene, which plowed through the American Southeast and left an unprecedented wake of destruction, much of it still chaotic, particularly in Western North Carolina. As I write this on Saturday, 10/12, there are still 22,000 Duke Power customers without power up in that region, with the lag in restoration due to the extreme infrastructure damage caused by the storm. Most have heard, I suppose, that the delightfully quaint village of Chimney Rock was just wiped off the map by the raging Broad River, with the nearby towns of Bat Cave and Lake Lure heavily damaged as well. 

Folks around here, including my family, have a lot of fond memories made up in those hills, memories that leave us sober and pensive and wistful as we contemplate the loss. May God and mankind meet the needs of those who have survived, and may he grant rest and peace to those who did not. 

Here in the Upstate of South Carolina we fared significantly better, though many among us saw destruction unprecedented in their time here. There are still power lines lying in the street, their poles snapped or twisted off by the force of the wind and rain, including on the street where we lived in our first house. 

On our current property the damage was less severe. About 4 am Friday I heard a tree fall, I thought in the backyard or near there, but it was still too dark to see. With daylight we saw that a neighbor’s tall pine had fallen from the roots and crossed our property perfectly from side to side, taking out both fences (which weren’t in all that great shape anyway). Some of its branches had nicked the corner of our large shed—the one that Jim Pfaffenroth built all those years ago, when he lived in this house, while he was my university’s corporate pilot, before he moved to the northern hinterlands of Saskatchewan. We’ll need to get that repaired. Otherwise, no damage. 

We still had power that next morning, until it fizzled out about 7.30 am. We were down for 5½  days, but we were fine; some years ago we bought a 13KW dual-fuel generator and had the house’s breaker panel rewired to accept an inordinately large and heavy 75-foot extension cord. It’ll run the essential stuff comfortably so long as we don’t use the heavy loads—stove, microwave, other heating devices. (I managed to get along without a hair dryer all that time.) The furnace and water heater are gas; we had some trouble with the AC, but with the temperatures in the 70s, we were comfortable most of the time. 

The big issue with a generator, of course, is fuel. This one runs propane and gasoline, and to my delight, the QT just down the road had plenty of gas. The first day or two there were long lines, but everyone cooperated, and the employees were funneling traffic around like it was the Chik-Fil-A drive-thru. I love the way people generally cooperate in a crisis, helping each other out, being reasonably pleasant in spite of everything. The image of God runs deep in mankind—so deep, in fact, that it shines through despite all the evil and corruption that makes itself so obvious in cultures. 

But I made a mental note to buy 2 or 3 more gas cans and a couple of extra propane tanks when this all settles down. 

Just one example of that kindness happened right in our yard. The pine tree that fell down was our neighbor’s—though of course any damage is our legal responsibility. Saturday the neighbor’s college-age son came over with a chainsaw, chopped that monster of a tree up, and piled it neatly for disposal. I didn’t ask, and neither did he. 

He’s well on his way to becoming a fine man. 

And I made another mental note, to get my chainsaw blades sharpened. 

Many of my neighbors and colleagues were without power far longer than we were, and some had significantly more damage to deal with. Two local families that I know of had their houses pretty much destroyed, and recovery will take a long, long time. 

But with the help of friends and neighbors, recovery will come. 

Photo credit: Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration