A New Chapter: Silver Linings

September 27th, 3 days ago, was the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene passing through western North Carolina, leaving a path of destruction that included our community and our home. I thought I was sitting down to write about that event, that life changing date for us, and the aftermath - how it was so unreal, so heartbreaking and how shell-shocked we were just after. But I've realized this is actually about triumph, overcoming fears and despair, and the strength that comes from rebuilding. It's been a really difficult year, but it's also been immensely rewarding and we, Joey and Scott, are even stronger as individuals and as a couple than we've ever been before.

This anniversary doesn't mark a dark time in our story, rather the first steps, forced as they may have been, into a new chapter in our lives.

Clearing what has our pond

This post isn't about a year marked by trauma, depression, anger, frustration, stress, fatigue or any other emotion we might have felt at times over these months. It should be about how we overcame. It should be about where we find ourselves a year later, happy and on the move, our lives with more free time, and a bit of security, than we've had in years. It should include the other emotions we felt: accomplishment, victory, satisfaction, relief, joy, and love.

Looking over our property a week after Hurricane Helene - the first time we were able to get back in

This is a story about resilience, though we joke about that term quite often. It applies up here for sure, folks have absolutely been resilient, but Joey and I say to each other often, maybe after another tree falls, or we have another mudslide into the creek, or a big storm rolls through and washes away part of our new gardens: "I'm tired of being resilient".

We stayed warm through January with almost daily burn piles

But here we are, resilient as ever. Resilienting our way through the summer, and now into fall. Recovered, really, though there are still remnants of the storm all around us. The biggest, the most looming one is the old cabin, but that's just going to have to wait - another thing we've come out of this with, something we've learned to accept. Patience.

We are on the list to have this cabin torn down by the Army Corp of Engineers via FEMA - the list is hundreds deep - I think we'll be waiting a while!

Joey and I work together well. It's not to imply we don't ever disagree, of course we do, but the more important the project, the more we need to work together to get through something, the more cohesive we become. When the hurricane hit we jumped into crisis mode. It was almost a week before we could get back in to our place, but we tried every day (read about this HERE). Since we were driving up from Charlotte daily, we loaded up the bed of our jeep, as well as a trailer, with emergency supplies. We delivered these to a couple different shelters and food pantries.

Dropping off supplies to Nesbitt Chapel Church - a temporary shelter and food hub

While we didn't discuss it or realize it at the time, this was our coping mechanism. Filling our time with work, something necessary that was helping others, but also keeping ourselves busy, no time to sit on our hands and dwell on what had happened. No time to allow ourselves to become overwhelmed. We'd drive up, make deliveries, try to get to our place, drive back and crash, exhausted from the day. And we'd plan the next try the next day.

Our septic tank, exposed at the bottom of the gully.

Once we got in to our place and surveyed the damage we immediatly began working on our plans to rebuild and recover. Our access was gone, the community road in was washed away and the little bridge, or culvert, at the beginning of our driveway was filled and the stream divered to a new course. Our driveway itself was now a small flowing creek. Our meadow where we'd planted our gardens was gone. The pond had filled with debris, sand, and silt, ran over the banks of the dam, and dug out a 65' wide and 15' deep chasm, a huge gully in the center of our property.

This also washed away our septic field and the upper part of the drive. A mudslide had come down the hill behind our old cabin, dropping trees through it as well as on the roof. The same slide filled the spring fed stream bed behind it, directing that small creek to a new course, across the porch and underneath into the crawl space.

Where Rush Creek flowed by our small cabin, a small rivulet just a few inches deep most of the time, there had been a torrent of water. It pushed the creek about 8' closer to our home and rose 12' high, up to our deck and foundation. While it eroded much of this away, it didn't damage the home itself.

Up and down our land and along the creek, we have 103 acres and it spans about 1 mile along Rush Creek, there were small mudslides and filled and redirected creeks. Then there were the piles and piles of trees, stumps, limbs and other debris. Everywhere. However many you are imagining, I can promise it was more.

We laid things out in sucession of need, we'd have to get access in first, so a culvert to cross the creek and driveway would be our primary focus. Once the culvert was in and driveway restored we'd be able to work on the field, and in particular the septic field. We'd need to get the power restored, then we could test the well and get it running. With the septic in and well running we could move back and work non-stop.

The culverts and the driveway were repaired over the period of 4 - 6 weeks. As soon as that was done we were able to get Duke Energy in to restore power. With power we had water, and with water we were able to stay for more than a night or two. A lot of the work done so far needed big equipment, but now that was done, and it would be us: chainsaws, hacksaws, axes, wheelbarrows, shovels and fire. Back to the basics.

Our power was restored right around Thanksgiving, end of November. This was great, and we were eager to get more work done, but our business in Charlotte, the Canteen at Camp North End, is event oriented and seasonal, and Christmas - and December in general - is a very busy time there. We were thankful, repairing our place had drained our savings, but this also pulled us to Charlotte to work some of the week and on weekends, time we wanted to be dedicating the mountains.

Post holiday season, in January, after serving hundreds of gallons of hot cocoa, mulled wine, apple cider and tons of snacks, we were able to pack up and stay and work at the cabin for weeks at a time. Pretty much the entirity of January and February. We also decided to sell the Canteen.

The months leading up to the decision had made it clear to us that our hearts weren't in it any longer. In general and after the storm had knocked us in a new direction. The place was and is, for us, such a fun spot and on a great campus just outside of Uptown Charlotte, Camp North End, but it's an entertainment business, hospitality and events business, and a place to come have fun. If we weren't inspired or into it, no one else would be either. It needed new life to work, new energy and new blood - and we needed the freedom from the time and stress.

We worked our way through January and February, the really cold months, pushing through 20 degree days, big winds, and snow. We warmed the cabin with the woodstove, often with a pot of goodies for dinner simmering on it all day. We fueled the stove with wood cut from the debris Helene left us - warming us first when we cut and split it, and again as it burned.

We spent two months solid together, seeing almost no one else, working all day until the sun went down and we couldn't move any more, then firing up the grill or grabbing food off the woodstove, relishing in what we'd gotten done that day, no matter how large or small, and tending to our sore joints and muscles. Seems odd, given the circumstances, but I look back now and see this as a beautiful time in our lives, romantic actually.

Between September and March we each lost about 20 pounds - we called it Hurricane Crossfit. Shoveling and moving hundreds of wheelbarrow loads of soil, sand, and compost. Moving and piling tons of limb and tree debris to burn. Moving the equivalent of multiple tractor trailor loads of river stone, stacking it and building walls around our culverts and our garden beds, building up the stream beds and stabilizing what soil we had left. We cleared debris from the stream beds. We moved all the sand and silt that filled our pond, the huge dunes, and created our new garden space.

Plotting and planning where sand and silt had filled our pond.

Sand and silt dunes where our pond had been

The river stone that was everywhere was perfect for stone walls, stone retainers for our vegetable beds, stone walkways and other elements of our new hardscape. It's the same stuff they sell at landscape supply places, and would have cost us tens of thousands to purchase. We bought hundreds and hundreds of native shrubs, plants, and flowers to plant everywhere - not only for beauty, but to try and hold the soil in place where everything had been stripped bare.

We rebuilt our garden, repeating the steps we'd taken just a year before. It was important for us to get a garden in, we'd poured our hearts into the previous one and the symbolism of getting this done was paramount for us, showing us, for ourselves, how far we'd come after such a huge setback. For better or worse Helene had filled the pond and given us about a half acre of flat land, all directly in front of our cabin. So we not only had a garden, but a better one. Better situated for the sun, closer to the cabin, flat and not sloped and terraced. The sandy soil will need some compost and amending for most of the stuff we grow, but it's also a wonderful base and we'll have a couple dedicated beds to root vegetables, something we've not really been able to grow much in the past - they want the loose silty soil we have.

(UPDATE: Potatoes, sunchokes, sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, beets and turnips all did GREAT this year in these beds!)

A midsummers bounty

By April we had the garden in and planted. In May we closed the sale of the Canteen and a couple weeks later the same for our home in Roatán. We found ourselves in a spot we'd not been in for years. We had time on our hands. We had some savings in the bank again and we'd finished all the big "triage" work at the cabin. After such a huge push for 8 months we decided to take some of this time, enjoy the summer, and let life show us what direction to go.

It's been amazing. A bit of travel, time in the mountains without working, time in Charlotte going to events and shows. We have our weekends back, and we don't have to check the weather apps all the time, worried that events will be rained out. Joey has been designing and sewing again, and our wardrobe is full of fantastic clothes he's created or reworked.

We are in a really good spot, and it's hard to believe considering where we found ourselves 12 months back. I guess we are resilient, and that does feel good. I'm glad we've recovered as far as we have, but I'm good with showing how well Joey and I work together. I'm done with being resilient for a while.

The sign we had made for Linwell Falls when we bought the property

Joey and Scott Linwell Hurricane Helene one year later, recovery, rebuilding Linwell Falls

Joey and Scott Linwell - New Chapter Silver Linings