Last night as I sat wakeful beneath my open window, a chorus of frogs began to sing me to sleep. This morning, gathering what flowers remain in my wind-torn garden, I was startled by a cardinal—the first songbird I’ve seen in over a week. There were hawks after those winds, though they looked shocked too—but no songbirds. Now they are coming back.
We humans are not alone in our loss—animals, trees, ecosystems have been devastated and are also finding their way to recovery. But one of the only things my scattered brain has been able to rest on today is the sight of one of my favorite trees, a maple the storm spared, turning slowly golden through the window of my counseling office. That tree alone holds my frantic mind still.
It reminds me that in old stories of floods, often the very first signs of hope are the reappearance of birds, the blooming of branches. I have learned to watch what nature does and to emulate it as closely as possible, given that it’s the oldest regenerative system we can observe firsthand.
One of the first things I am seeing is tiny plant seeds germinating in the mud. Their roots will hold the mud in place as they drive down and in, and in some cases, these pioneer plants will serve as bioaccumulators, taking in and secreting toxins from the soil so that a greater diversity of plants will be able to germinate in the next generation.
How can we begin to hold ground, hold our place, even as we metabolize the toxins that have been left in the wake of the storm? And how might we build back in such a way that the coming generations are even more diverse, more resilient?
I have seen, too, in the humans around me, that those who have been able to take action are faring better than those who have not. There’s something about DOING, metabolizing all of that worry and fear and sorrow into action, that helps us. Picking up sticks from the ground, carrying buckets of water, delivering food, shoveling mud. Or sitting in the sunlight and humming, shaking, dancing.
Moving our eyes across news does not count. It is important to think and to connect resources and to plan—and thank you to those who are doing it! But even this toxic wash of mud left in the wake of the floodwaters is not sitting still. It’s cracking, drying, sprouting, transforming. We need that, too. What is beginning to take root in you that holds you, however incrementally, together? How are you—literally—moving through this?
Here are some ways to volunteer: https://www.handsonasheville.org/
Today, in between sitting with clients, I went outside with a poem and walked. This is the poem I walked with today. It has helped me put language to the grief I feel for places I love that are changed forever. The lovely curve of Chimney Rock gorge. Sweet Swannanoa. My ancestral home, Marshall. May the words of this poem help you root your grief in the large arms of all who have grieved beloved cities before.
The God Abandons Antony
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
-C.P. Cavafy
May we all be graced with courage, may we all find support in the ancient resilience of the natural world even as we grieve the exquisite music of what we have lost.
