Day 38 of the Apocalypse, Ground Zero, Gerton, NC pop. 231

It is no coincidence that Jeff and I lived in Gerton when Hurricane Helene landed.

We were meant to be here.

When I first moved to Asheville a dozen years ago, it was for two reasons. First, God told me to, during a three-day whirlwind visit with a friend about twenty years ago. Second, was to do a residency in a hospital about 45 minutes south of the city. A year of Clinical Pastoral Education was a requirement for completing seminary, and getting my Master’s of Divinity degree.

The route from my home to the hospital was along the highway that runs through Gerton, and straight down the Hickory Nut Gorge. The steep, twisty two-lane road also travels through Bat Cave, Chimney Rock, and Lake Lure, and twenty-four miles later eventually lands in Rutherfordton, where the hospital was.

At the hospital, I learned that people love to die around me. Every time I would show up for a 24-hour shift someone would pass away. The nurses and doctors began to notice and would flinch when they would see me coming. But I came into my own during that Residency. I learned that all of the trauma I had experienced in my own life, had uniquely prepared me to attend to others, during their most traumatic moments.

The drive through the Hickory Nut Gorge became my church time. With gorgeous views of the mountains and the sounds of Rocky Broad River rushing alongside the road, it soothed me. Especially after a 24-hour shift working at the hospital, attending to births, deaths, and everything in between. The Gorge gave me a sense of calm steadiness.

Every time I drove through Gerton I imprinted myself onto the land. Then I started dating a guy, who took me to one of the hiking trails in Gerton on top of a Mountain, with 365-degree views of the entire area, and it felt like I had come home.

The relationship with the guy didn’t last, but my love for the place did. Now Jeff and I live at the top of that very mountain.

A thousand little decisions over decades brought me to Asheville a dozen years ago, and Jeff to Asheville just a year before we met. While we were dating, I lived just over the continental divide from Gerton, so it was convenient for him and I to hike the multiple trails in this area.

One day, en route home from a hike, we noticed that a new business had opened in Gerton: Bearwallow Provision Company. The owners, Erik and Kate, were 15-20 years younger than us, but we felt an immediate kinship with them. Erik and Jeff have almost identical senses of humor and personalities; Kate and I balanced them out. Jeff and I casually mentioned one day that we were looking for a property or a home in the area.

About six months later, we stopped by the shop in the middle of the day, to grab some beverages after a long, sweaty hike, and to see Erik. He immediately locked eyes with us, asking if we were still in the market for a house. We were. Erik shared that his next-door neighbors, a couple from Florida, were looking to sell. It was a second home for them. One of them had passed the year before, and the other was in her 90s, and no longer able to care for two homes.

As Erik was telling us about the house, the caretaker for the home, Bobby, walked into the shop and offered to take us up the mountain and show us around.

The house was two miles up a steep gravel road. A tiny 1978 yellow cape cod, it was full of memories and memorabilia, including an inordinate number of stuffed, plastic, wood, and metal roosters, chickens, and birds. Even the clock hanging on the wall had a cuckoo that would jump out of it at the top of each hour, causing me to recoil. The exterior and interior of the house were the exact opposite of Jeff and I - we both prefer clean, modern design.

But we knew immediately that it was going to be our home. It was as if a lightning bolt went right through both of us when we saw the house, and the land. We looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Yes.” It’s the kind of knowing that runs from the bottom of your toes to the top of your head. Where everything in your body screams “YES!”

Our decision was not a logical one. It was an old house, in an HOA with only eight houses, that was designed to hold seventy-five. It was two miles up a bumpy gravel road, on top of a mountain 40 minutes from town. We were in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was virtually impossible to get ahold of building supplies, with up to six-month wait times for everything from lumber to appliances. But we followed our intuition, and reached out to the owner that same day. She said yes to our offer.

We ended up gutting the house down to the studs, keeping only the pine floors, and doubling the size. We turned it into a black modern mountain home. We decided to spend tens of thousands of extra dollars on a whole house generator, and a rain catchment system behind our house, to keep water away from our one-level home. These were not things that we had to do, in order to live in the home. But our intuition told us they would be necessary.

After we moved in, we both invested time and energy into getting to know our community - especially Jeff. Because he is retired, he was able to work at Bearwallow Provision Company one or two days a week, to spot Erik who was also working full-time as a firefighter. Jeff loved being able to hang out with neighbors, hear the latest gossip, and help tourists navigate our area and hiking trails. Erik, Kate, Jeff, and I began spending even more time together, now that our homes were next to each other.

Everything we said yes to, in faith. None of what unfolded in our journey to living on top of our favorite mountain, in the middle of Gerton was a coincidence. It was all preordained.

A thousand little decisions and coincidences brought us to this particular place, at this particular time, with these particular people, so that when Helene hit, we could be here to help.