Day 33 of the Apocalypse, Ground Zero, Gerton, NC pop. 231

I’ve been craving normal - a normal routine, a normal schedule, a normal reality.

Which isn’t really possible, right now, but sometimes I can find moments of normalcy.

There’s a walk/hike I normally do every day in our neighborhood, using a combination of gravel roads and paths through our 85-acre HOA. It’s a walk because I stroll leisurely, but also a hike, because there’s about a 600-foot elevation gain.

The dogs and I haven’t done this walk/hike since before the hurricane. Initially, all of my hiking was devoted to getting down and up the mountain, three miles each way, to be able to get to the fire station when there was no road access.

Road access arrived on Day 12, when the 30-foot chasm that was our connecting road was replaced by a temporary narrow one-lane road. Then our UTV arrived on Day 14, which made getting around anywhere easy.

Once we had our UTV my body stopped cooperating. My adrenaline slowed down, and I no longer had the bandwidth to hike, exercise, or do much of anything beyond getting basic needs met.

Now, two weeks later, I want to get back to my normal exercise and movement routine, because my body is in constant pain (thanks chronic Lyme disease), and I know movement helps. So does sleeping, eating right, and not living in an apocalypse. I’m managing what I can, and letting the rest go.
By yesterday afternoon the foggy morning turned into a brilliant sunny day, around 65 degrees - perfect for a walk/hike. The dogs were eager to “go for walkies,” and immediately took off down the trail behind our house.

Leaves are now covering all of the roads, hiding the gaps and gashes left by the hurricane. They even cover some of the tree branches, that were haphazardly moved to the side of the road weeks ago, in an effort to get vehicles through as soon as possible.

Our walk/hike takes about an hour, and halfway through brings us to the highest point in our neighborhood - a crest in the mountaintop overlooking the wide swath of mountains below us.

We call it the “sit spot,” because years ago Jeff and I hauled a bench up there, so I would have a place to sit, meditate, pray, and listen.

The path leading up to the sit spot was clear of debris, which made me think that our neighbor Walter when he visited from Charleston last week, must have driven his ATV up to the path to clear trees. He likes the sit spot, too.

I was deep in thought by this part of our walk/hike. The dogs were busy smelling everything, dutifully searching through the fallen leaves for bear poop, deer poop, other-dog poop, or really any form of poop to eat. I never get that part about dogs. What is so appealing about smelling and eating someone else’s poop?

When I finally looked up, at the top of the path, what I saw took my breath away. What I should have seen was a little circle of trees, a path around them, and our bench on the far side of the trees.

Instead, there was a gaping cavern of nothingness but fallen trees and mud. A gigantic mudslide had swept the entire crest of the mountain away.

The path was gone. So was the bench. To the right of me was a 150-foot tall gash in the mountain exposing a muddy rock wall. I couldn’t even tell by looking at the cavern where the bench should have been.

It never occurred to me that Mother Nature would have touched this sacred place. She had protected the Baptist church in Gerton, as well as the churches in nearby Bat Cave and Chimney Rock. Why would she annihilate my outdoor church?

So much was washed away by the hurricane. So many sacred things taken. But this has always been the state of the natural world. After devastation, new life is formed. Nature knows how to bounce back, much better than humans.

On our walk/hike back to the house we saw wild turkeys roaming, and evidence of both deer and bear walking on the roads. We heard so many birds flitting around in the trees above us, and squirrels and chipmunks scampering through the leaves below.

All of these animals have found a way to keep living in this brave new world, where so much has been cleansed and stripped of its original design.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Every space is meant to be filled. The animals have already started doing this. Our role now as humans is to find ways to create our own sense of fullness.

Fullness begins with gratitude.

I was able to walk/hike with my dogs on a beautiful fall day. With so many trees gone, our mountain views are even more prominent.

I am safe.

I am warm.

I am fed.

I am loved.

I am able to love others.

I am always cared for. I am always supported.

Things always work out, even when that looks radically different than I would have imagined.

The giant cavern is making room for something new to show up.