Reflections on Loss and Opportunity In Flood Ravaged Western North Carolina

I can still feel the lines in my body.  I close my eyes and I run the Green Narrows in my mind, and my body feels every move. As I think about the rapids, certain muscles tense, like a dog chasing rabbits in its dreams. Following Hurricane Helene, these moves, these currents, these images are now just dreams of a river forever lost. And like a wonderful dream, I want to hold on to it, knowing it's all that is left of the Green Narrows I knew so well. When I multiply my grief by all the rivers in the path of the hurricane, and all the people who have come to know them so well, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the collective loss. 
 
People lost lives and loved ones in that storm, homes and businesses, hangouts and whole communities. This collective loss weighs heavy on me; I feel for all my friends and family members that have been impacted, but also for the region as a whole and especially the small communities along the rivers we paddle. Because we know these rivers and communities so well, boaters have rallied to help in an astounding number of ways. The resourcefulness and hard work that our community responded to the storm with, shows who we really are as a bunch of river people. It shows we care about the people and places where we boat, maybe even more than we knew. I’m confident that we’ll keep up our efforts to help communities rebuild and help people get back on their feet long after the constant drone of helicopters and chainsaws cease. 
 
It feels almost flippant to talk about grieving over the loss of rapids given the scale of destruction and human hardship. But I don’t think it is. I can feel the profound losses of others, feel the loss of things in my own life that have nothing to do with paddling, and also feel the loss of rapids and changes to places that were profoundly nourishing and important to me. It’s not an either-or situation. It’s all-of-the-above. People have built their entire lives here around the bedrock foundation of rivers like the Green, and the changes that the storm has brought will tear at some of the strongest threads in the social fabric of the boating community around here. I think it’s natural to grieve changes to our most cherished places and experiences, and I also see reasons for hope and for action. 
 
The rivers are not gone, just changed. In some cases like the Green, it feels like a drunk route-setter snuck into the climbing gym overnight and moved the holds into a tortured impossible pattern. The rapids appear at least at first glance meaner, more dangerous, messier, and less fun. One ray of hope is that big floods in steep rivers flush fine and medium sediment downstream to lower gradient deposition zones, temporarily leaving steep sections with only large boulders. Subsequent smaller flow events will start to fill in spaces between and under rocks with silt, sand, gravel, and cobble. Things will shift. Sieves will fill in. Things might clean up. At least we can hope. 
 
Other severely flooded rivers though might offer new classic moves or improve overall. Maybe there will be some new great surf waves on the Pigeon, French Broad, or Noli. Maybe the Rocky Broad, Watauga, Linville, and Pigeon Dries will see some old hazards blown out and replaced with cool lines. Or they could go the other way, or be a mix. For now we don’t know what many rivers will look like, but Western North Carolina boating has been remodeled, and now we’ll get to learn and boat a lot of new rapids. Like many, I am curious, and I’m hopeful that there could be some exceptional new rapids out there to run, and that at least some of the riverbed changes could be positive or neutral. 

For all of the changes paddlers will see out there when the time is right to return to these rivers, we encourage paddlers to log trip reports and page updates on the American Whitewater river pages. Guidebooks are now out of date, and Facebook posts get lost down people’s feeds: we need to document these new rapids and hazards in real-time and in an enduring way on the American Whitewater site, and we’ll need boaters’ help. 
 
Access is another facet of paddling that is currently devastated but could be rebuilt in a better way. Many of the river access areas and river trails in WNC were unofficial, poorly designed, or squeezed into spaces that were not adequate. Perhaps, when roads and communities are rebuilt, access areas can be integrated into plans, and be better than before. In all likelihood, there will be some areas that are no longer suitable for buildings, but could be ideal for parks and river access. American Whitewater and the paddling community generally will work with communities and public land managers to get this opportunity on their radar and help them rebuild in a better way. This work has already begun. 
 
Another big opportunity and concern is how roads, railroads, and streambanks are rebuilt following the storm. I’ve seen countless online videos and images of excavators hauling rocks out of riverbeds to use as streambank armor and roadbed material. While understandable in this acute crisis phase, this unregulated work is simplifying streambeds in a way that reduces natural flow complexity and makes rivers less capable of dissipating the energy of future floods, have less habitat, and also makes them less natural and enjoyable for paddlers. This is how roads were built and rivers were treated 50 to 100 years ago, and now sadly we appear to be doing it again. Instead, and in post-crisis planned projects, long impacted rivers like the Swannanoa could be given more room to be a river, with streambanks that are pulled back to limit erosion, healthy riparian shrub and tree populations, and ample riverbed complexity. This could help some once-hammered rivers flourish again as natural ecosystems and recreational resources. We hope to see paddlers play an active role in everything from community planning efforts, to encouraging neighbors not to simplify riverbeds and banks, to volunteering for tree planting. 
 
And there is the trash. It is hard to convey how much heartbreaking debris is in our regional rivers, and removing it will be a herculean effort. This work has already begun, and will continue for many months or even years. Our rivers are strewn with everything from household items, to shipping containers, to railroads, wires, and other industrial debris. This stuff is a pollution risk, an eyesore, and also poses real paddler safety issues. Cleaning up this debris will require many hands! Paddlers will no doubt play a role in manually removing debris, but also some debris will need to be removed by helicopters and cranes in the near-term while those tools are mobilized. Ideally all the big pieces of debris will be flagged by paddlers and removed in the near future, or as paddlers know all too well they could languish for decades in otherwise natural river corridors. 

As I sit here a week and a half after the hurricane I still have helicopters overhead all day, and most of Asheville and many small towns are still without running water. I’m blown away by the efforts of paddlers to gather supplies and get them to people in need and I’ve pitched in to help. And yes, my mind drifts to the rivers I’ve spent 30+ years paddling in this area. I wonder how they are doing, what they look like, and how we can help them recover. I have ideas. Other paddlers have ideas. I’ve no doubt that our river community will help shape - and is already shaping - the future of Western North Carolina into one with beautiful rivers and healthy communities.