“An Autumn Baptism”

A poem of grief, reflection, and hope in the midst of Huricane Helene response in WNC

by Emily Dobberstein

It has taken me 9 days to finally find my grief.

It has been day after day of hypervigilance

Of mental exhaustion and decision fatigue

Of trying to hunt down and keep up with so much new information and change

Coming from everywhere all at once.

Who has diapers?

He needs oxygen.

Where is the distribution center for...?

My baby can only eat this one kind of formula.

She needs extra large underwear.

They need solar batteries to charge their wheelchair.

Their bridge washed out.

Of course you can shower at my house.

They're stuck on the mountain.

He needs ice for his insulin.

The road is gone.

I have an extra fan.

Look at that car in that tree.

Who has feeding tubes?

They need gas for their generator.

We haven't heard from him.

Ma’am, can you please help me unload my trash into the dumpster? I can’t walk.

Throw it away.

Unsalvageable.

Total loss.

Gone.

Forever changed.

They'll be talking about this for a hundred years.

Are you safe?

Do you have water?

Have you heard from...?

When will we be able to ____ again?

We have been caring for neighbors and friends,

chopping up trees, offering showers, filling water jugs, and

serving wood-stove-cooked comfort food.

We have mucked out second-story art studios along the French Broad

wearing PPE and N95 masks and helmets in the midst of toxic mold and muck and mud.

Fifteen-foot debris piles of people's lives heap along highways.

Hundreds of strips of muddied plastic hang from toxic-mud-caked trees 

for an entire mile

Beside skeletons of buildings I once knew,

Like twisted Halloween decorations.

The seemingly endless haunted house that none of us wanted.

How many drowned memories and dreams can we stuff into trash bags before we break?

The west fork of the Pigeon River is quiet and clear today,

No longer a freight train of raging, earth-filled water,

But she is changed.

The deep, clear pool where we slung our bodies off a rope swing all summer

is now a humped beach of

sediment and stone, dry as a bone,

while the flow of the new, flood-carved path flows strong

many feet away from where it once was.

The spot where we picnic is still there, with a new layer of sand under the old maple.

The river is much wider than it was two weeks ago.

New holes and tracks carved out of the earth.

I hiked in from the road closure, and

finally, far enough away from the bustle of the beast of flood relief,

My tears flow steadily now,

Feeling the weight of all that has been lost, near and far.

I climb to the boulder that spends its summers supporting the slippery feet of children

that steady themselves on its spine to jump off into the clear blue-green pool below.

It is rare that I am here alone, but I am grateful today, because I needed the freedom

to sob as loud as the rapids,

for no one to hear me but the trees.

Heavy, chest heaving sobs slowly fill this perfectly lonely air,

And I am held by the forest that has become sacred to me.

Everything is different.

Grief on top of grief on top of grief.

Lives lost.

Homes gone.

Businesses washed away.

Roads picked up and spit back out again as rubble.

Long-awaited events and festivals and parties canceled indefinitely.

The guilt of survival, of

"we didn't get hit that bad"

"people have it a lot worse than us"

"Save it for someone who really needs it"

The one downside of this stubborn and independent Appalachian culture –

the deferment and denial of help.

The sun slinks below the last tree canopy before the clearing and falls on my tear-drenched face.

I pause my lament and look to my left,

following this new and foreign flow of the river I used to know like the back of my hand.

And there, where the water slows, just above the new section of rapids,

bobs a little brown head, followed by a long, slender back.

Safe and peaceful without the loud squeals of children filling the air all day,

a river otter swims upstream toward me,

pouring herself through the water over and over again.

In all of my 11 years and hundreds of hours spent in the wilderness of Western North Carolina,

I've never seen a river otter in its natural habitat, wild and free.

She dives six feet down to the bottom of the hole, but I can see her the whole time from the boulder.

She hovers there, low and cold, searching for minnows.

She comes up for air, and we both gasp when we meet each other's eyes,

shocked to be meeting each other here, like this.

She quickly dives and swims upstream, through the cool waters,

and I watch her climb the rapids, strong and steady, until she is out of sight.

She reminds me that the time of life on earth is so much more expansive

and resilient

than what our little human world can grasp.

The earth will heal,

and no matter how high the flood waters rise,

life finds a way.

My eyes are red and puffy, but dryer,

My tears are part of the boulder and river now.

My grief has not shrunk in size,

but here I am held by the ground of being,

pulsing with life and abundance,

and my heart remembers that it will do what it always does when grief comes my way --

my heart will grow large enough to surround this new grief,

and I will be okay.

We all will be okay.

What is there to do now, but to do what I always do when I am on the cusp of transition,

when I don't know what to do next or where to go from here,

whether it is summer or winter or spring or autumn

I do what I always do in this river, who has become kin to me.

I stand on the rocky shore,

I slip off my clothes,

and like an otter,

I pour myself through her waters,

over and over again.

An autumn baptism.

Rebirth after rebirth after rebirth.

//

Video of the otter: