October blew in with a hurricane, possible tornado, bringing natural mess and human misery. Here in the Blue Ridge mountains of Western North Carolina, we experienced many losses—lives, livelihoods, roads, homes, food, power, water, cell and internet service … We saw almost 500 trees down in our surrounding neighborhood. What does the count matter? People constantly ask about the “death toll,” but when Nature drops a bomb on us fragile humans, numbers no longer matter … dollars or deaths—human, animal or tree. Yes, each one counts, but we have little time to stop and add or subtract when the needs are multiplying.

Many miles of the popular Blue Ridge Parkway are closed by tree falls and landslides. Creeks became rivers and rivers became monsters of mud and, well, boulders, buildings and bodies. As I say, a horrible mess that will take years to recover from (more wisely, we might assume).

After a “number” of days, assisting several elderly neighbors, we escaped to the South Carolina coast (now under tropical storm watch!). Fact is, truth is, we’ve messed up the environment so much there is no place to escape any longer—if there ever was. Way to go, humanity.

In this stormy season, I continue to hold onto something, not so much “hope” but a sense that humanity can do better. I’m no idealist, and of course, I’m no believer in a cosmic “savior,” but I suppose it’s simply that “sense” the storms, sufferings and setbacks will kick us in the conscience enough to act more responsibly, since, I think we all know on some deep level, we are responsible for better thinking and acting, individually and cooperatively. We’ve seen some of that in the goodness and kindness experienced during this current disaster (which, by the way, constantly reminded us of world disasters in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Asia. . .).

If you’d like to help me a bit in this moment, I invite you to read and perhaps comment on several articles I’ve written this month. Church and State, from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, just published “Picking Jefferson’s Pocket,” and Humanistically Speaking in the UK published my essay “iHumanist: Integration of Information and Inter-relation.” It’s been challenging to publish my columns, and I missed one week, but looks like my “storm of words” continues.

All these writings can be accessed on my Essays page: https://chighland.com/articles/

Thank you for reading, responding and reflecting with me on the reality of Nature’s power, reminding us of both our powerlessness and our innate power to connect person to person, even (especially?) when hard times blow in upon us with the inevitable storms of life on earth.