Deep dark auburns of oak leaves

   line some ridges below.  Like colorful contour lines to the seas of pine greens.  This year even in December the trees offer a splendor you just can't find in a city.  But the miles and miles also fill the eyes with trees like wreckage.  Big, old trees, shallow earth too saturated, toppled during and after Hurricane Helene.  Piles of trees carried down hills and waterways.  Tree-crushed vehicles and structures.  The mind can't wander away from the devastation.

  Relief centers take donations and serve locals affected and volunteers and workers with water and pantry food.  The Cajun Navy in a walmart parking lot is a pop up civilization point.  It's there that the heavy, dark and chunky with icy air cold front slams in.  Cardboard from pallets of water and dirt get caught in the gusts.  Mild air is blasted away like the cold front is a leaf blower.  Seasonal nature calling.

  Long marred as a ground filter to atmospheric rivers of air pollution the giant heads of mountains are bereft of trees now.  The few that were standing are laying like blown out birthday candles on a soil surface that really does look more like the moon.  In breaks of cloud the sun blares the truth.  Exhaust-ed sentry trees are charcoal in color on some of the just lower mountains.  Whatever comes from sky up here soaks into this filter of ground.  Some of it looks like creme brulee with crevices carving new ravine eventually.

  Dump trucks en route to gravel pits and dirt stores rumble over mostly two lane country-mountain roads even as soft shoulders calve and asphalt bulges and cracks.  Twisty mountain passes are undermined and in spots lost to lower ground.  Hairpin turns between ledge and many hundreds of feet of below.  Ravines crammed with debris.

  The ups and downs of traveling in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina somehow mirror where we've been politically as a nation.  As do the many hashtagCountystrongs.

  The AM radio in Cocke County is the radio I miss when I am anywhere else.  Especially in disaster, like WRAL in NC, the people stick with it round the clock and keep community not only informed but on the mend.  They announce things people have to swap and sell; report the sports; play good music; give updates on public safety and events to get excited about.

  The food at CANCUN Mexican restaurant can't be beat.  And speaking of food, be supercareful about eating deermeat right now.  A lot of the dead animals you see along the roads have been poisoned.  

  Reading a helpful for our region article from a magazine called Trout.  "Mettawee Reconnection" by Mark Taylor (Spring 2024).  And when I can get to it I'll post some materials from the NC Forest Service.

  From the road the Mt. Mitchell golf course where it is visible is badly damaged.  And up into Madison County the two month later (Asheville just got it's water back) damage to "downtowns", severe.