Day 16 of the Apocalypse, Ground Zero, Gerton, NC pop. 231

I spent most of yesterday in the company of strange men.

Will and his crew of lineworkers from Kentucky, with their beautiful white electrical trucks lined up along our road, and accents so thick, that even my 12 years of living in Appalachia couldn’t decipher.

The lineworkers apologized for taking so long to restore our power. I countered with my shock that they had made it to our road already. We thought it would be months before we saw them.

Aaron, a firefighter and paramedic, who owns a campground down in Bat Cave, along a creek. 24 people were evacuated from the campground 5 days after the hurricane because it took rescue workers that long to get to them and clear space for a helicopter to land.

The flooding destroyed the campground, his family’s primary source of income. Aaron’s insurance refuses to pay for repairs because he doesn’t have flood insurance. Of course, he doesn’t have flood insurance because WE LIVE IN THE MOUNTAINS.

Aaron, a big guy who chuckles loudly, kept nervously laughing as he was telling me that he doesn’t know what to do next with the campground. Tourism is gone from our area with the catastrophic damage. He doesn’t have the money to fix everything himself. He’s got more questions than answers right now.

John and his crew of skilled sawyers from Shelby, NC, who brilliantly brought their own UTVs with them, making them mobile enough to be able to get up the mountain to our neighborhood.

I climbed into one of the UTVs with them, cramming myself in the back seat between Frankie and Billy, who joked that he hoped I wasn’t wearing perfume because his wife would smell it on him later and wonder what he had been up to. I led their UTV brigade up our roads, showing them the devastation, and sharing stories of what our neighbors have been through.

I sweet-talked my way into moving a dozen repair trucks out of the way - to get these guys up to the top of our road, so they could clear the trees off of our neighbors' driveways.

I found Sam, a gentle white-haired man with a youthful face and big glasses, who works at Whole Foods, inside our Fire Station shopping in the Walmart of our thousands of donated supplies. He pulled me aside to confide that if I needed a peaceful place to shop, his particular Whole Foods is calm and welcoming.

Sam gets it. We’ve gone to town for groceries twice, and both times the noise and bustle were overwhelming.

Dave, a gentle gay man, neighbor, and trauma specialist, who sat with me on the bed of a trailer parked by our fire station for a couple of hours while we swapped trauma stories and our shared history of abuse. It felt like a relief to be with someone who gets it.

Stevie, who emerged in a haze of cigarette smoke, with a salt and pepper ponytail and deep creases in his suntanned face, making him look at least 10 years older than he actually is. He brought a crew, also out of Shelby, NC, along with two giant generators to donate. Stevie needed help finding families to donate the generators to, and a place to camp for the night near the fire station.

Dorrien, who has done disaster relief for years, and is part of a team of procurement specialists out of Asheville. He showed up at the end of the day with multiple donated specialty items that Jeff had solicited for our community.

He needed a UTV ride over the mountain to Middlefork, an area of our fire district that still has 80 people trapped. Dorrien brought a giant Starlink with him for that community and also wanted to scope out a location there for a helicopter to drop a 500-pound propane tank for the entire community to have access to.

Kyle, whose small black pickup truck pulled up behind us, as we were trying to get back up our mountain at the end of our day in our UTV (yay! It was delivered within 48 hours of purchase).

We were waiting for an hour behind electrical trucks for the lineworkers to do what they needed to do. Their trucks were blocking a big section of our private road.

Kyle is a small, muscly man with tight, curly dark red hair, and a large heart-shaped tattoo on his left bicep. He lives down the mountain next to the creek.

The flooding destroyed his shed full of most of his equipment for cutting trees. He sells firewood to make a living and was heading up our road to a friend’s house to help him clear trees.

Erik, our next-door neighbor/firefighter (not a stranger) who picked me up to hug me at the end of last night, after he and his wife Kate came over for dinner.