Magic in Adversity
The reason why people come to Asheville in the fall, to see the leaves change color
When Hurricane Helene Hit Asheville, NC, US
Through the window Swita, my cat, watched the winds whip the branches that would not yield their leaves like it was just another day of bird watching, while I deepened my breath and stilled my mind to cast an intention of safety around our apartment like a shield.
After two days of incessant rain and one day of battering winds, the air outside finally stilled, the clouds dried up as birds began to chirp as if nothing happened.
The electricity stayed on through the first day until around 5 am the next morning when I saw the digital clock in my bedroom die. Some water still left in the pipes, I rationed it along with a meager three gallons that I saved to get through the next couple of days when I naively expected the electricity to return.
Having been a resident of the Hawaiian Islands, including having lived in Lahaina, Maui, somehow during my 3 years of life there, I never encountered the 80-mile-an-hour winds, massive waves, flash floods, and landslides that come with living on a tropical island during hurricane season.
Never did I ever imagine one would strike our bubble of a town nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.
“From the start of the precursor frontal showers on the evening of Wednesday, September 25th to the heart of Helene moving through on Friday morning, it was one of the most incredible and impactful weather events our state has ever seen”, says one report from the North Carolina State Climate Office.
I live in Asheville, a city in Western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains known for its vibrant arts scene, historic architecture, and tourism.
October is the height of the tourist season or what locals call “Leaf Season” where 100’s of people flood Asheville to get married, attend weddings, celebrate anniversaries, go to music events, or take trips into the Blue Ridge Mountains to wonder through the explosion of color that peaks during this month.
But there would be no Leaf Season this year.
Asheville is in the red zone at the top.
Inconceivable Event
On an online weather map the day before the precursory downpour hit Asheville, I saw an image of the predicted path of the hurricane which looked like a freight train headed straight towards Asheville.
This type of storm in Western North Carolina is shockingly rare: if anyone was taking this seriously it might have been a transplant from Houston, TX, or someone from Florida, having grown up huddling in their parents’ closet while the storm passed through.
In 48 hours, the soil became saturated with more than 12 inches (30 cm) of rain, trees were falling like soldiers throughout the heavy, forested towns of the western part of the state, knocking out power lines, flooding rivers and towns, forming landslides and blocking back roads as well as major highways.
A Chosen Attitude
I knew my attitude would carry me through the uncertainty of what I had yet to discover as I filled with gratitude for all the grace, material support, and protection I experienced not just during the storm but in my life.
I wondered at the significance of this hurricane: what it meant metaphysically, including the insights and opportunities it might bring being such an inconceivable event.
I found it natural to feel blessed in the aftermath of the catastrophe of Hurricane Helene.
Why?
Not because I was able to leave town with a bank account loaded with funds, as soon as the roads opened, or because I had family driving into town to pick me up, escorting me to a home with clean running water and electricity.
Because I subsist on the ascension attitudes of love, praise, gratitude, surrendered trust, and hope.
Asheville’s water treatment facility flooded, since it’s located on the French Broad River, the major water vein running north through town so now thousands of people were without power and water for an undetermined amount of time.
Like a test from the Cosmos to see if I’ve truly learned how magical these attitudes are; during the week of our intended launch of Into the Mystic Realms along with our first course, Mastery of Magical Manifestation, one of the most devastating hurricanes hits my town.
Yet I’m emanating surrendered trust knowing that I created this reality, that I’m surrounded by blessings as long as I align with them through my chosen attitudes.
“Catastrophes are powerful opportunities to express the ascension attitudes; to glean the clarity, abundance, and resources we might not access if life maintained its predictability.”
'Dissolver', one of a few local breweries in Asheville, donated a 1,000 gallons of water they would have used to make beer, turning the brewery into an aid station.
Feeling swaddled in the outpouring of generosity of restaurants giving away free food, breweries giving away free water, the community of neighbors that formed in the apartment building I’ve been subletting for 3 months; only one neighbor of which I met prior to the hurricane.
Expressing gratitude for the temperate weather, sunny days, and shared meals. My neighbors with electricity on the opposite side of the street stretching extension cords across to those of us who’ve been powerless for over a week. The free bags of ice, the stories of miracles of people being in the right place at the right divine time to help those who needed help most.
Watching Asheville return to a small town where neighbors sit with each other on porches by candlelight, where people talk to others they would never encounter as humanity’s shields dissolved allowing us to connect through the heart in ways we don’t.
I worked at Nest Organics, two doors up from Dissolver for over a year and never met anyone who worked at the brewery until the hurricane. I loved how this hurricane brought people together.
