The Other Side of the Mountain
When a Hurricane Hits a Small Mountain Town
A disastrous hurricane pounded our neck of the world.
It takes one devastating storm to rip through your community to become a hard core believer in climate change.
Emergency teams searched the mudslide for survivors from the sweet mountain towns down the road that were swallowed up by the raging rivers.
Even an established community where we live isn’t immune to the grumbles and groans of Mother Earth.
Calm in the storm
Practicing mindfulness and emotional release is tricky on a normal day.
It easily slips back on the scale of things to pay attention to when you’re thrown into survival mode.
Trees were plucked up by the roots for miles and miles. Massive 100 year old oaks were snapped like toothpicks.
We didn’t have power or internet at the time I wrote this.
The towns around us were locked in with no open roads going in or out. Power lines were twisted and curled over the roads like a plate of spaghetti. Relief crews have once again been elevated from heroes to saints.
Our friends and family were all safe. But in a small community like this we know others grieving loss.
Our cats were freaked out by the constant motoring of generators trying to keep the small fortune of food from spoiling. We make our lives so complicated. We’ll drive 2 hours for a can of gas to save a refrigerator of food.
We are the people in your neighborhood
We have 2 stop lights in our town. They were 4 way stops during the power outage. The blowfish in the pickup revving his engine through the road rules of taking turns was a minority. Most folks here have been generous and kind.
We didn’t have the fist fights for supplies like some of the bigger areas around us. It seems in a small town we keep each other in check. We’re still pretty connected even though we don’t know the neighbors past the ones next door. There’s a sense of caring that blankets a town that has one of each commercial establishment.
The grocery store was packed with carts full of beer and wine on Sunday after the storm. With internet out and survival stress in the air, the town is joining in a dot to dot of houses having hurricane parties. Even when the patrons got to the register and were told they couldn’t buy booze before noon on Sunday no one got outwardly pissed. They just laughed it off. Maybe a little embarrassed that their coping mechanism was exposed for all to judge.
Crickets
The birds and crickets don’t even seem to notice that the humans that crowd their space are in shock. The four leggeds might have some habitat rebuilding to deal with. But they have plenty of scrap building materials to work with at the moment.
We’re lucky with life and luxuries. We had running water, flushing toilets, propane cooking, transportation. It was a glamping staycation for our family. We have all the camping gear. We had hot coffee.
The kids’ school was closed for over a week. The high school was the Red Cross shelter. The schools can’t feed the hundreds of kids with running water and refrigerators knocked out. A lot of the kids rely on school meals.
I’ve had a voice blurting out between the survival adrenalin stress, “Stop believing the story that’s telling you connecting with your essence is hard. Rewrite your story.”
The true story goes like this
Connecting with our Divine essence is the most natural thing in the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting comfortably in a quiet candle lit meditation room or if you’re in the shock of a community in the stress of loss of home and life.
The essence of God surrounds us. Engolfs us. It’s an energy. A state of being. It never dies.
As we learn to believe the story that says love is our natural way of experiencing this human life, we transcend. We hold a beacon so that our brothers and sisters of the planet who are trapped in darkness can see their way out.
We’re sending light and love to all those in our community and in the world who are grieving and suffering. Our greatest wish is that you can feel you are not alone. You have glimmers that unfold into a state of realization that you are the magnificent Divine.
I welcome your thoughts and input in the comments.