Pickup sticks. It’s a game I was good at in grade school. You spill a handful of sticks -akin to bamboo skewers- on the floor. The object is to pick up sticks without disturbing their neighbors. If a stick other than the one you are trying to pick up moves, then your turn is over. Whoever picks up the most wins. It’s a game of dexterity and planning.
Imagine that game, but instead of sticks, there are whole trees on the ground. And if you don’t have a chainsaw or a Bobcat, you can’t play. Now, it wasn’t just our yard, or our street, or our neighborhood, but the entire region. And we’re just in upstate South Carolina.
We didn’t have the flooding that North Carolina had in addition to everything else. It still took over a week to get power back and we’re waiting to get our full internet service back even now.
The sounds of generators and chainsaws were constant for weeks. Dozens of trees fell on a street we use everyday. The mess is still very evident. Logs and branches are piled on the sides of every residential street of every neighborhood I drive down.
Keep in mind, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida. It churned across the Florida panhandle and Georgia before it got here to the Carolinas. No one was expecting this. And a state further down the line got it worse than we did. That is absolutely mind-blowing. I know I’m late to try to write up this hurricane. The reason I am is because people need to know how very bad it was.
There’s question about how people in rural western North Carolina will even vote next month. I’m sure the people will prove themselves resilient. That region breeds hardy folk. Now we know why.
Tuvela Two-Step 