Nothing is like it was before Helene

The daily routine has returned with potent reminders

My apologies for a month of silence. Lots of whirling thoughts, slow to ground and center.

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“Are you back to normal yet?”

It’s a frequent question lately, nearly three months since Hurricane Helene swept through Western North Carolina.

“Normal” for me these days is to be assaulted by the smell of pee when I walk out my front door, the sour, acrid stink of raw oak from the three felled oaks lying near the house. For one neighbor it triggers pleasant memories of his first woodworking project, but makes everyone else cringe.

It’s a potent daily reminder that nothing is like it was.

Master Gardener classes didn’t discuss root balls

The enormous root ball of the 107-year-old white oak still dominates this side of the house. Given its size – 16 feet across – and tremendous weight, everyone is unsure how to deal with it. If we cut off the 15 feet of attached trunk, will the ball fall back into the hole in the ground where it sat? Should we knock the soil off, then saw off the roots?

One neighbor, who has several uprooted trees right next to his house, has been doing just that - slowly knocking off the soil, cutting the roots and burning them in a burn barrel in the evenings while he sits with his beer.

I’m lucky I only have one uprooted tree to deal with. They are dying everywhere, along the roadsides, throughout the forests, on neighbors’ land. Chances are virtually all will be left to rot, which won’t be a bad thing for the forest ecosystem even though we humans may find the sight unsettling.

My mind recoils when I try to envision the number of lost trees and the unimaginable scale of destruction to all life, human and non-human.

Millions of trees

The U.S. Forest Services estimates that “millions of trees” were destroyed, with 20% of 1 million acres of federal forests across Western North Carolina damaged or destroyed.

• The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation said in a recent email that crews removed 150 shipping containers of downed wood along one 11-mile stretch of the Parkway in the Asheville corridor. Access to more than 310 miles has been restored, but sections with significant road washouts are closed for an undetermined period of time. It was the most visited national park in the United States in 2023 with 16.7 million visits.

• SAWS (Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards), immediately pivoted to disaster relief efforts throughout the worst-hit communities. Now that repair and recovery is underway, the crews are back repairing wilderness trails, where as much of 90% of tree cover has been lost.

• Where the Trees Once Stood: See how Helene wiped out North Carolina’s forests. (gift link) This Washington Post piece showed the vast forest damage, beyond the deadly floodwaters in valley communities. I suspect the Post became aware of the damage from YouTuber and storm chaser Aaron Rigsby, who posted this video of the harrowing ordeal of this family.

Should we even be concerned?

When sharing my grief over the devastating tree loss with some friends, one impatiently responded: “Marsha, the forest will grow back!”

Yes. Maybe. Certainly not in our lifetimes. Thousands of acres of tall oaks, rod-straight tulip poplars and towering pines are gone.

The flood of sunlight on previously shaded forest floors will encourage all kinds of flora and fauna to grow, some of it native, much of it not. Many forest lovers fear non-native species will take over and crowd out native species, already a widespread problem.

All the experts agree that forest “management” here is suddenly very different and whatever recovery and restoration looks like, it will take years.

Intense pockets of destruction

Two of my neighbors, whose primary home is just over the state line in South Carolina, had 60 trees destroyed by the storm.

The clean-up crew was there for a week, at a cost of $15,000. I don’t know if their home insurance provided any reimbursement. Fortunately, their house was spared.

Felled trees that missed houses, like mine, were apparently not that unusual.

One of the regional forest rangers, who had 12 trees down on his property that all missed his house, told me: “Lots of folks blessed in that regard…”

Firewood and more

Two men worked on my trees on and off over several weeks in November splitting smaller trunk sections into firewood.

The two smaller oaks that snapped in half were heavily rotted and much of the wood not worth saving for firewood. We saved numerous large trunk sections for use as side tables around a firepit I want to create in this flat area, where the previous owner had a large white vinyl Victorian-type gazebo that I quickly sold after I moved in.

I was at a loss about what to do with the 15 feet of trunk attached to the rootball.

My first thought was to post on Facebook and NextDoor for a woodworker who would appreciate a long straight log of white oak, rather than have it all turned into firewood. But there are literally tons of wood on the ground everywhere now and wood is cheap.

And even though this log was easy to access because it’s not deep in the forest and someone with a flat-bed truck could back right in off the road, you still need heavy equipment to move it.

The backbone of Mother Tree, a 107-year-old white oak felled by Helene.

I finally realized I would be heartbroken to see the backbone of Mother Tree hauled away to an uncertain fate, possibly left to rot in someone’s side yard who originally had good intentions to use the wood.

From heartbreak to devotions

Two ideas resolved my dilemma.

First, to cut the trunk into four stump chairs to use around the fire pit. Sounds simple enough, but sawing straight lines through a 23” diameter trunk of hard wood requires considerable skill and a new chainsaw blade, I’ve learned. The guys will come back to cut the chairs and burn a huge pile of debris.

Second, I was inspired by these images posted by Katherine Beckett Winship, who lives in hard-hit Black Mountain east of Asheville.

Guess who’s going to be learning wood burning?

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been outdoors painting landscapes. I can’t think of a better way right now to rekindle my art-making than by creating a memorial of organic images on these fallen trunks to honor Mother Tree, and all the tree-beings who were lost.

I’ll play with drawings and designs this winter. Maybe I’ll focus on the four directions. Or the seasons. Certainly I’ll listen to the wood and see where it wants to go.

Come spring, I’ll seal the trunks to delay decay, but the wood will eventually be restored to the forest, as it should be.

Sky drama as a recent storm rolled in.