A version of this article first appeared in WFAE’s Climate Newsletter. Sign up here to receive weekly climate news straight to your inbox.
When June ended, the sky opened up. Oppressive heat gave way to tropical downpours that flooded central North Carolina. Hillsborough planned to relocate a lift station to higher ground. Then, the town lost the federal funding to move the station out of the floodplain. Then, the lift station flooded. Electronics shorted. Sewage seeped into the Eno River. Happy Fourth of July weekend. A new month begins.
The echo of flooding is the hum of mosquitoes. In the weeks after Tropical Storm Chantal, they hop from home to home, laying their eggs in bird baths, buckets and tires. West Nile virus jumps from crow to mosquito, bird to bug, and humans are caught in the crossfire. Nightly temperatures creep up. Everything becomes a dull ringing. The heat suffocates, floods inundate and the news asphyxiates. Local public media stations shudder as $1.1 billion in federal funding evaporates. This is July.
Saturday morning, I set out on a hike near Boone. Cell coverage ebbs and flows. My watch buzzes, an email. Re: Federal funding, staffing cuts, are you still employed? The screen clears. 10:00 a.m. My watch buzzes again, another notification. Low battery.
I stand on the bank of Lost Cove Creek. Helene carved out the flanks of mountains like a butcher, spilling entrails of schist and other metamorphic rock to pool around the feet of these wounded escarpments. Helene heaped trees like pelts along the shore. When it rains, the wounds fester, necrotizing clay flesh eroding around the landslide. Without the protection of roots, mountains bleed into rivers.
Trail markers traded white circles for orange flags when the trail branched off the Appalachian Trail. Intrepid sawyers carved a path through much of the Helene debris, but I still totter along a fallen tree like a balance beam. I squint across the fluvial gleam to the opposing bank. No flag. Much like the truncated trunk where I rest my boots, I'm stumped.
Lightning rends the sky somewhere in the distance. Summer storms drench the earth, soaking the roots of rhododendrons. Fuchsia and magenta scales coalesce to form a bud with chartreuse frosted tips. It looks like a tropical pinecone, a kind of Hot-to-Go Guy Fieri. Where they've bloomed, white sleigh bells rattle silently in the sparse wind. I step into the creek and walk downstream, one of many wandering the valley today.
The sun sets, and muggy ataraxia descends on the understory, mirroring the prostrate forms of hikers drooling on blow-up pillows. Sweat reaches a stalemate with the damp air. Ghost stories animate the shadows at the edges of campfires, begetting beasts with penumbral fur and skin stained by the dappled moonlight. Bone white and spindly, the zombie fingers of coral mushrooms resurrect. They walk through the dreams of tired campers, but their only prey is the last vestiges of a tired parent's hope for a good night's sleep. An owl hoots. A man stumbles out of his tent to relieve himself. Fireflies wink in and out of existence around him, fewer than when he was a boy. Poison Ivy and Virginia Creeper pool in moonlit clearings, filling the silence between breaths of laurel and rhododendron. Pee splatters the side of a maple tree.
The sun rises, shepherding backpackers from their sleeping pads, who in turn saunter toward the smell of fresh coffee or, more likely, away from the stench of connubial halitosis or flatulence. Camps break down, tent poles snap together and tents belch stale air as they’re rolled up. As the mercury climbs, the water beckons. Parents lather sunscreen on their children, and a boy tumbles into the water prematurely like the Exxon Valdez. An oily sheen of solar protectant radiates downstream. The sun peeks through a hole in the canopy, peering over a landslide. It barbecues the child. Oink.
When a young girl steps into Wilson Creek, her foot spooks trout and tadpoles alike. Squishy bodies still hide embryonic limbs. They burrow their faces in the sand. You can't see me. In the woods, a dog licks an extra-salty maple tree. A man's leg starts to itch. This is also July.
I’ve long since thrown my watch inside my pack. Out here, time slows to the rhythm of cause and effect. We can mark the time in waxing and waning financial tides or the passage of bills in Congress, or we can trade the numbers for flower blooms, tadpole feet and fireflies. Inside my stomach, an internal alarm clock goes off. It's time to eat.
Articles mentioned:
- In wake of Tropical Storm Chantal, NC attorney general sues FEMA over canceled flood grants
- The Charlotte area is about to hit peak mosquito season
- Public radio stations across the state face difficult decisions in the wake of federal funding cuts
- Seeing fewer fireflies this year? Here’s why, and how you can help.
