Urban camouflage at dusk

Our billionaire Mayor inherited the fortune his ancestors made by killing Native people and cutting down old-growth trees. He has declared it unlawful to sleep on a sidewalk and is sending police to confiscate all property belonging to people who live in the streets. I’m guessing the owners of this tent hope to blend in with the color scheme that surrounds them. The cost of policing houseless people is greater than the cost of housing them. I just leave that here.

What I want to talk about is the flooding around my home town, Hendersonville, North Carolina, 21 miles south of Asheville. You may have seen some photos of Asheville and the floods caused by Hurricane Helene. I had a great uncle who lived near Lake Lure, a clear mountain lake where he loved to go fishing. (Video link to Lake Lure starts at 9 seconds.) I left Hendersonville when I was five, against my will. I went back in 1961 to live with my grandmother and left again in 1963 and stayed away except to visit her and to attend her funeral in 1991. Also once in 2005. It’s a right-wing, Trump-loving part of the country where Civil War battle flags now fly next to Trump signs. 

Yet in every place there are people who swim against the tide; there are people who are targets of racism and xenophobia, people who reject all forms of hatred, who fight back. In Hendersonville there’s a small Buddhist community run by a nun I admire. I almost moved back there to work with her, but then Bella was born, Sue and I connected more deeply. The Venerable Pannavati has checked in as “Safe” on Facebook, so that’s good. 

These floods have occurred in the mountains. In the mountains! Mountain people have no notions of hurricanes or floods. Sure, snow-melt makes the creeks rise in the spring, but nothing like this. It’s human-caused climate change. So of course I wonder if any of the Trump-loving people in the area still believe his claim that climate change is a hoax, or that it’s all Biden’s fault. I wonder. 

I see maps on the internet with the names of places I associate with my childhood, my birth family. Lake Lure, Chimney Rock, Hickory, and of course Asheville, which we called “the city,” as it was the only place resembling a city near us. We would dress up in our best clothes to go to the city once or twice a year. Now it's under water. In the mountains.