The Climate Haven Myth

 

If you were to turn back the clock about 20 years, 19 to be exact, you would find me with a 5 year old and an infant. We had just come home from China with our baby girl. Although she was nearly 9 months old she was developmentally like a newborn. Obviously she required a lot of therapy.

Back then I repaired and sold dolls on eBay and worked for an MLM selling naturally-based cosmetics on the weekends and my husband worked for the electric company. On average he spent 3-5 days every week in Asheville, NC. Since Asheville was about 5 hours away from our home at the time I was essentially a single parent during the week, at least when school was in session. Once summer came, we would accompany him on his trips. While he was at work during the day I would take the kids around the city exploring the hiking trails, art exhibits, restaurants, and shops.
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We particularly loved the Arboretum. It had an amazing free program for kids where they would “rent” a backpack (the cost was the parent’s driver’s license which was redeemed when the backpack was returned) to each kid. The backpack contained things like binoculars and tweezers and a magnifying glass with instructions on things they could look for in the gardens and forest.

There was a certain spot on Elk Mountain with the best views of the valley spread out below and every year we would take the kids’ photos up there with the view in the background. This was one of our “secret” spots; you could only find the spot by climbing down some rocks on the side of the mountain. It was marked by some graffiti on a rock. These mixed media paintings are from my private collection; they are my depictions of those views. 

At Christmas we would always go to the Grove Park Inn and sit in the rocking chairs in front of the blazing fireplaces or on the back porch, sipping hot chocolate. We loved to see all the gingerbread houses sent in for the competition.

The Tunnel Road farmer’s market was one of the only places in the state to find my favorite Norwegian gjetost cheese (pronounced “YET-oost”) and there was a really fantastic view of the surrounding mountains from a parking lot there.

My sister lived in Fairview for years and we would spend Christmas with her family and visit all our special places. 

I am crying as I write this because as more time goes on since Helene it’s becoming clear many of those places are simply gone. They just don’t exist anymore. And that doesn’t even taking into account all the small towns we loved, like Banner Elk and Lake Lure, wiped off the map. 

I am furious too, because I recently discovered one of the things inspiring the enormous growth in the area were a bunch of articles declaring Asheville to be a “climate haven”. I knew everybody and their brother was moving to Asheville ~ to the point it was getting ruined ~ but I didn’t but I didn’t realize they thought they would avoid weather there. Recently it’s been a trial of constant gridlock and frustration and a pain to drive through. We rarely visit anymore since my sister moved away. It breaks my heart. Highway 26 has been under renovation for about 10 years and now apparently it washed away so that will have to start all over again. 

A couple years ago some lady kept messaging me on Poshmark of all places wanting to know about North Carolina because she was thinking of moving here. (I have to answer messages on sales platforms so I couldn’t just ignore her even though she had no intention of buying anything from me). And I told her the water in Mooresville is contaminated and it’s the site of a rare cancer cluster and the Crabtree Creek area of Raleigh always floods and Biltmore Village always floods and she wanted to argue about it because she had read about how great those places are. Then a hurricane hit the mountains and there was terrible flooding in Hendersonville and some in Asheville and she messaged me all mad like it was some kind of personal affront. WHY were the mountains flooding from hurricanes she wanted to know. So I explained hurricanes in the Gulf frequently come up across the Appalachians and cause flooding. I couldn’t understand why 1) she was harassing me about this and 2) why she was so mad. But now I understand she was someone who had been told North Carolina is some kind of magical paradise with perfect weather. It’s not.

One of the reasons we loved Asheville so much a few decades ago was because it was so accessible and walkable. You used to be able to drive right downtown and park and walk to your favorite stores and things but those days are long, long gone. And we never loved it for the climate. As beautiful as Biltmore Village is, it has always flooded, even during pretty minor storms. Asheville is bowl-shaped and all the water from the surrounding mountains rushes right down into it.

I’ve lived in every part of North Carolina, from the “down east” coastal plain to the mountains, for 40 years and “climate haven” is never how I would describe it. I’ve seen hurricanes, floods, ice storms, blizzards, earthquakes, tornadoes… I remember one time when I was in high school, it was May but the sky looked like snow. Sure enough, a little while later it snowed heavily. It had been 75 degrees the day before so it didn’t stick but it caused some traffic trouble while it was coming down. Most of the time I am on my own in these storms since my husband is trying to get the electricity back on. He’s been at work for more than a week as I am writing this!

I’ve had to weather many storms alone with babies in tow. The “Carolina Crusher” blizzard of 2000 hit at the end of January when our oldest son was an infant recovering from a case of RSV that nearly hospitalized him. Jerry had already worked through New Year’s Eve and the weeks around it because of Y2K fears. He finally came home and the blizzard hit and he had to go back to work for weeks longer. I was at the hardware store waiting in line with propane tanks and fire starters as we had been without power for days and days. Thankfully we had a grill and a fireplace so I had heat and could cook on the grill. I was wearing one of Jerry’s sweatshirts with the power company logo on it and some man in the line sneered at me and said “Oh I’m sure YOU must have power”. Why he thought I would be standing in line with a bunch of propane and fire starters (and a sick baby) if I had power I don’t know but I let him have it. I gave him a tongue lashing I bet he is still smarting from to this day! The winter we brought our daughter home Jerry was gone for two weeks straight working ice storms in the mountains and we didn’t have a fireplace anymore so I was getting by with a kerosene heater and grill until we ran out of food and I braved the roads to my parents’ house since they had a fireplace. A few years back Raleigh flooded horribly and Jerry was named “flood czar” and stationed there for weeks. We had quite a few trees down but thankfully our neighbor came over to help me and our teenage son clear them. The employees of the power company are the last ones to get to go home and their families are just left to fend for themselves in these disasters.

Anyway, my point is, while you shouldn’t listen to anyone who tells you climate change is a scam, you should also not listen to people telling you certain places are immune. Nowhere is immune and no one knows anyway because everything is changing so rapidly. What is certain is, if everyone on earth moves to the same place you’re going to get all the issues like the runoff from pavement and stressed water supply and and building in flood plains you have elsewhere and that will just make any storms worse.

I used to work for a publishing company that produced those magazines you get free from grocery stores and your health insurance company and stuff like that. The articles recommending places to live or health practices are written by employees like I was once: very young women right out of college, the only people who will work for the pittance of a salary. They get online and read a bunch of articles about their assignment and then they rewrite it so it’s not plagiarism. This is not investigative journalism; it’s an echo chamber. You should take anything you read in magazines, on blogs, online with a grain of salt and look into it for yourself. A cursory internet search reveals extensive flooding in Asheville over the past few decades. 

I don’t know what anyone could do to prepare for the extent of the floods and mudslides from Hurricane Helene. Even if you stockpiled food and water like we do in our “hurricane kit” if your house washes away it will all be gone. I guess just get all the insurance you can afford and hope for the best, but be aware of what’s possible, even if it’s unimaginable.

I grieve for Asheville and the surrounding communities. We were very lucky but did have some flood damage we will have to correct when we can ever get up to our cabin again. Our daughter finally got over there to take pictures and we will have to rebuild a lot of steps and clear a lot of trees but the cabin is okay. You can watch a video of the flooding here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DAtt_7YSc3g/