Twelve Miles and Counting
Taking a breath this week as my father enters hospice and Tamar Reno marks 300 days post-Helene
I’ve published something every Thursday since I started this Substack, but this week, I need to step back.
Before making the decision, I had an Indigo-colored draft in my head about journeys, detours, cliff faces, and the ancient mystery of the Appalachian mountains, how they take your breath away and hand the air back to you as a question — usually the question you most needed to ask.
But then life came rushing in.
On Sunday, we drove to Nashville to pick up little Indigo, the newest Siberian kitten to join our family. The trip was supposed to be simple, and we were trying to outsmart the storm-damaged section of I-40 that had only recently reopened. We ended up instead in a nine-hour travel loop through Atlanta and Chattanooga that felt like Siberian jet lag.
On the way home, we caved and braved the recently opened pass of I-40 that had been ravaged by Hurricane Helene and, more recently, a mudslide. We found towering cliffs on one side and raw earth dipping to a bruised river valley on the other. Entire strips of the mountain were brown and razed by the hurricane’s force.
I've lived inside the aftermath of Helene for 300 days. I've written about it, watched the rebuilding around it, and cleared trees because of it, holding my grief between my teeth like a nail.
Seeing that twelve-mile stretch of single-lane interstate and witnessing how the land is still split and clawing its way back together, undid me in a different way.
I said to Christopher, “These mountains feel like home.”
And he said, “They feel like home because they are home.”
Seeing it in person was something else — and I live here. It’s hard to draw a clear picture for people of how much was lost.
To truly sketch the skeletons of these mountains and what the storm did to them, we need
.300 Days post Hurricane Helene
It’s been 300 days y’all, 300 days since Helene, and although some things are better, we can still taste it in the back of our throats and feel it in the pit of our stomachs. The lingering flavor of Appalachian grief and the hollowness of loss. - Tamar Reno
Tamar Reno published a piece today marking 300 days since Hurricane Helene. From the moment the storm winds died down last September, Tamar went to work keeping her community — and the world — informed through the powerful alchemy of her words.
The storm brought Tamar and me closer together, so despite the losses, I’m grateful for that. She is my soul sister.
In 300 Days: Dirty Faced Angels and Eating Rocks, she writes about the parable of stone soup — how individually we are weak, but together we are strong, about how combining our resources can keep a community fed both physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I’m an only child, a control freak, and I have trust issues. Leaning on others is very hard for me to do. I ask for what I need as a last resort when it should really be the other way around.
My eyes and heart have opened up to my community, a deep lesson post Hurricane Helene, but the storm prepped me for utilizing the gifts of those around me as the most monumental event happened in my life this week.
I brought my father home from nursing care to live with me at the farm.
When the Storm Comes Inside
For as much as I like having everything lined up perfectly in advance, the decision to move my father into hospice care in the farmhouse happened suddenly and by the divine intervention of friends.
The medical equipment arrived after my father was delivered to the house, so we parked him on the couch and leaned into the certainty that it was time and that truthfully, nothing and no one would ever be quite prepared enough anyway.
We were still jet lagged from the road, and still carrying the sound of highway rubble and kitten purrs. We just cleared a space and set down new ground. This isn’t the kind of homecoming I imagined, but my father is here, and he is still himself.
And here we are, building a new rhythm around him.
The mountains are clawing themselves back together. So are we.
There is something about living in a landscape still bearing visible damage that makes you tell the truth faster. The power lines are still leaning, and the trees still snap when the wind blows. No one is pretending. And that’s what it’s been like with my father. There is nothing for show, and nothing is tidy. It’s just the day-to-day necessities of learning how to hold presence inside what is effectively breaking.
Tamar’s piece would have been monumental for me any week, but today it hit powerfully because of all this. She writes about stone soup and community, and how sometimes you feed each other with the rock-broth of what’s left.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to carry it all alone, but this week, with a kitten on one arm and my father in the next room, I’m feeling something shift. It’s not about surviving the storm. It’s about what you carry with you after — and who offers to carry it with you.
This week, I needed to pause. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something important to read. Please go read Tamar’s piece. Let her hold the story this Thursday. She’s earned it.
And if you’re curious about the trip to get Indigo, I posted a photo essay on Facebook.
More soon after I’ve had some sleep, carved more space, and probably taken more kitten photos.
Love,
Kim
PS: I guess I found the time to write some words anyway :) As said as she helped me with last week’s voiceover for Stable Roots — “This is what is going to save you.” The words.
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Beautifully said and shown. I can relate. I bet it helps to have a new baby. Sending love and blessings for this process. 🌀💕🌀
Okay, you just made me cry. I love you so much it's leaking out of my eyes and down my face because there's not enough room in my body to contain it.
Life is effing messy. I'll sit in the mess of it any day of the week with you. #soulbeansforeverandaday