Feeling the piercing cold around my little girl ankles and bare feet in a clear spring-fed stream, I peer under stones to discover quiet friends — salamanders, crawdads, snails. My hand reaches to press on a bed of green moss, soft and firm, found on the overhanging rock. Breathing in the smell of wet leaves, I look up at the hills surrounding me and have the sensation of being enveloped in a warm and safe paternal hug. As a child, this is what I experienced — this physical grounding created a core understanding that we are part of this beautiful world, that we belong.

As an adult, the connection to the land and people of Western NC remains. After my family emerged from an inner room of our Piedmont home where, sheltering from the storm on the last Friday in September 2024, we gradually realized our communication with loved ones in the mountains was disrupted. Images then began filtering through our computer screens of unimaginable destruction. The safe feeling I had always experienced in the valleys of our beautiful mountains was shattered. Through the heartbreak, my love grew as I saw the good people of Western NC and surrounding areas band together to help one another, mourn loss, and start the work of healing and repair. We experienced how love for place, love for the NC mountains, can allow service to rise over despair. This resilience and selflessness of the mountain community and friends, this of all things is the reason I love the NC mountains.

Jessica M. Benton Lobdell, Hillsborough, a member of Piedmont Electric Cooperative