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“Can you come here a sec?” There was nothing in the timbre of Willie’s voice that indicated fear or even concern. He was standing by the laundry room door staring out at the storm. I could hear the wind howling and every once in a while, a branch or other debris would hit the house, but it didn’t seem too bad. We’ve been through plenty of storms up on the ridge, and with the exception of a single large branch that had come down on our porch roof, we really hadn’t experienced much damage. I wasn’t all that concerned.
I joined him at the door and stared in the direction he was pointing. It took a moment to register, but there was now open sky where “Big Bertha” had stood. This was a tree we had already been concerned about. She was 80 feet tall, had a canopy 30 feet wide, and was situated just south of the barn. We had already purchased the gear to take her down, but it was now obvious the gear wouldn’t be necessary. I panicked for a few seconds because I knew that if she had landed on the barn, it was likely that the majority of the roof-and probably the back wall-was gone. Then I realized if she had actually landed on the barn, the sound would have been deafening and we would have felt the vibrations, even inside our little cottage. She must have fallen to the south. We were tempted to go check on things but it was quickly becoming too dangerous to venture out. The wind had picked up, debris was flying everywhere, and the rain was coming down in walls, not just sheets. It was as bad as any Florida hurricane we had ever been in.
An hour or so later, there was an odd noise, and a little bit of vibration. Willie went to the laundry door and then called for me to join him again. This time, when we peered into the odd-colored sky, we could easily tell that Big Bertha’s neighbor was down too. She had stood just a little southwest of Bertha. Though not quite as big, the site of her caused both of us to gasp. She wasn’t just toppled over, she was pulled out of the ground with an eight foot diameter rootball now blocking our view further south! She had been yanked out of the dirt and now lay on top of a dozen other trees crushed beneath her roughly 3000-pound weight. The swath of destruction was both impressive and frightening. We were not looking forward to viewing Bertha.
By the next morning, we were without water and power, but it was safe to go assess the damage. Bertha and her buddies were all yanked out of the ground and where they landed, they had crushed a dozen other trees (and had slightly damaged our tractor, but we didn’t know that at the time.) It was a wide path of destruction. The thing is, they had all fallen to the south, which meant they all fell uphill ! How miraculous was that?
Elsewhere on the acreage, we had a couple dozen other trees down, including one across the driveway. It was large enough that they had to get multiple chainsaws out, and then when the logs were cut, our neighbor graciously brought his tractor and chains over to help drag all of the logs off of the driveway.
It will take months to clean up all of the damage, and yet, we are mindful of the miracle we experienced. So many of our friends, acquaintances, and fellow Carolinians will likely never recover. This caused us to learn a new word: Guiltitude. It is the state of simultaneously feeling guilt and gratitude. It is how we will experience Helene’s legacy.