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I wondered if I could and should leave Asheville. I had no cell service, so I assessed the damage from the lookout: I could see the river from the bottom of the hill, flooding the entire street and buildings below. I knew that most of the city was out of power. I knew no one had cell service anymore. But I wasn’t sure of the roads and would have to figure it out. I decided to walk. Along the way, I would see groups of neighbors. People helped when I asked for help directly, but no one came to me, except a few friendly neighbors. It took me about a day to figure out what I actually needed, let alone how and who to ask. My situation was an incredibly complex, highstakes puzzle. But by Saturday morning, my options were black and white: I had to stock up or leave town, and I had to figure out the safest option as soon as possible.
Neighbors helped explain the interstates, since I had no maps, paper or digital, to rely on. We all decided that if I-26 was open, I could get to Charlotte, which we all thought was fine, and I could figure it out from there. I decided to go find Wi-Fi and check out the road conditions. That was the first step. So I walked downtown and saw a marked improvement in the neighborhood
streets. People were out driving through the rubble. Others were out walking their dogs. Some were even jogging, and I wondered if they had figured out the whole no-shower thing yet. A smart neighbor had spread out a whiteboard with the highlights from the county’s daily 4 p.m. press conference: a 7:30 p.m. curfew, a boil-water advisory, emergency shelters, two or three known Wi-Fi locations, and every road in the entire western part of the state was impassable. I saw dozens of cars crushed, many houses blocked, and a few trees smashed into old historic buildings and homes. But everyone in the neighborhood was fine. There was no panic. There was a gentle friendliness, a cautious energy about the day. Despair might be looming, but people were working things out. There was tension but no chaos community calm rather than disaster.
At dusk, my next-door neighbors set up their fireplaces, and the neighbors down the block all came over. No one looked beyond the weekend. The teens were wondering if school would be canceled on Monday. It reminded me of the early days of COVID the alarm, then the hunkering down, then the “Okay, so we’ll be back in a few days, right?” before the big picture. They knew they had to stay put to stay safe, and they were doing their best. But I was in a different place. They had supplies. I went to bed and prepared for tomorrow.
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