What Happens After Helene?
This is the first email that I sent to my newsletter subscribers. Please subscribe to receive my newsletter in your inbox.
Hello! This is is Luke “Gribley” Costlow.
You are receiving this email because you opted in on my website or signed up at an event.
It might have been a long time ago, but don’t worry. You haven’t missed anything yet. I haven’t sent a single email.
It never quite felt like I had the right thing to say. That changed when I woke up to oak trees snapping and the mountains crumbling around us when Helene arrived.
So here is the first email, spurred to life because as I survey the wreckage of Helene, I have to find some hope somewhere. I'd like to share that with you.
HURRICANE HELENE
My family, home, and land are all okay after Helene. And our town of Hendersonville, NC has fared better than many. Power was restored at my house 13 days in, internet and phone connections are still very weak, but that's just a minor inconvenience really.
At least from our position, things are relatively stable. Not normal, but stable.
And we are able to start looking to the future. I recognize that not all in this area are here yet. I pray that we all are soon.
How do we rebuild what was lost?
How do we rebuild with greater resiliency?
How can we look out across all this destruction and loss and see a future where our beloved Appalachian homeland is fertile, beautiful, and abundant again?
The reason I wanted to send out this email is these questions have been omnipresent since the moment the wind stopped blowing and we popped our heads out to see for the first time the new realities of this landscape.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
What happens when we are able to get down the mountain to town?
What happens when we are able to contact our friends and neighbors again?
What happens once we get all the trees off the houses? What happens to them?
What happens with the mud and new water courses?
What happens when the bad news starts rolling in?
PERMACULTURE:
MY HOPE FOR WHAT COMES NEXT
So many people are doing such important work to stabilize, heal, and rebuild. It wells up tears in me as I am typing this thinking about all the selfless helping going on everywhere.
I am so inspired that the reaction to this event has been a harmonic convergence of people caring about each other in every aspect of our daily lives.
I am not surprised, (after all this resiliency is a defining quality of the mountain ethos), but I am inspired.
Permaculture has always been my hope for a future where we can live as members of the ecosystem of this planet, harmoniously using our creativity and intelligence to nurture abundance from the balanced cycles of the planet.
It’s the peace that comes from knowing that an individual can implement practices on their own patch of ground to buffer the harsh aspects of nature and maximize abundance and beauty.
I would like to pass on that inspiration and to help in the ways that I am best suited to help. I can’t fix a powerline or a road or build a house.
The best I can do is stay out of the way of the thousands of good people who have left their families and poured into the area to do just that.
HELPING, HEALING, RESTORATION, AND REGENERATION
In my personal capacity, I’ve been trying to help out and do what I can to ease the immediate suffering of the people in my direct orbit. So many still don’t have basic necessities; so many lost irreplaceable components of their lives.
In my professional capacity, I can see myriad ways that individual land stewards can make small adjustments to their land practices and mindsets to work with nature to create abundance and harmony and eschew dysfunction and disharmony with the land we live on, on this planet that we share.
What I can do is begin to turn our attention to the land use practices that we can implement once the lights come back on and our region shifts from saving lives to rebuilding.
Each of us who has lived through this, though our experiences are unique, have been changed by it. It has been a trauma for all, regardless of the level of personal impact.
Likewise, it has been a trauma for the land. We and the land are not separate -- our healing is interconnected with and dependent upon the other. I submit that we have the opportunity to harness that change toward the goal of a future that is more resilient and more beautiful than how we lived before.
PERMACULTURE MINDSET
The entire reason that I have launched my whole life into spreading the Permaculture mindset is because whenever “What happens now?” enters my mind, the ethos, principles, and framework of Permaculture thinking provide a path to the answers like nothing else I have ever found.
There is hope for a better future through Permaculture.
At its core, permaculture is the acknowledgement that we human beings are interconnected with the biological ecosystem of planet Earth.
And it is because of our creativity, intelligence, and capacity for understanding that we, unique among all other creatures that ever lived on this planet, have the agency to influence that ecosystem.
If we work with Nature, there is harmony. If we disregard Nature, we invite compounding disharmony.
I propose that we take this moment, while we are beat down, with our mountains crumbled, forests flattened, riverbanks battered, and waters poisoned, to change course.
Let's not wait to implement Permaculture after the cleanup is "finished"-- let's use Permaculture now to do that very clean up.
We must recognize that our built environment must be a harmonious component of the ecosystem of Earth. These Permaculture ideas are very simple and intuitive.
Stay tuned and you'll see.
WHAT TO EXPECT IN FUTURE NEWSLETTERS
If you've made it this far, I'm willing to bet that this is resonating with your own outlook. I hope you'll stay subscribed for a few emails and see if there is anything that will be helpful for you.
There is a lot of practical information that I want to share with you.
I’m not trying to sell anything. I will ask you to compensate me for any time that I spend working with you directly, should you want my focused help on the unique situations on your land, but that’s it.
Helping you on your journey would be my humble honor.
Otherwise, I'm just trying to get this information out because I want to live in a society where people listen to the land around them and strive to bring about the best outcomes for that land, knowing that therein lies our own best outcomes.
I hope that you will join me on this journey and give me the grace to tag along for a while as I strum a few chords and see if I can make a melody.
I think there will be something in this for everyone, whether or not you own land that’s been hammered by Helene. See if I come up with anything that you might think someone you know needs to hear.
Share it if you think so.
FORWARD THIS EMAIL
UPCOMING NEWSLETTER TOPICS
What can we do, right now, in the waning weeks before winter, to prepare for regeneration in the spring growing season (cover cropping, harvesting fall leaves)
Strategies for utilizing downed trees and limbs to build soil and slow water and stabilize slopes (brush on contour)
Learning to identify opportunities for regeneration created by the problems of the storm (identify micro-climates, native plant communities for soil stabilization and regeneration)
Inexpensive, DIY, permanent solutions to slow, sink, and spread water. The more we can hold and slow water on the slopes, the more we can prevent flooding in the valleys (berms and swales, ponds and rain gardens, brush on contour, living roots)
Strategies for reforestation and good forest management techniques (biodiversity, speeding up forest succession, layering)
Sharing of land-based aid resourcesas I encounter them (here's one for farmers: USDA - Emergency Conservation Program)
Riparian stabilization and restoration techniques (live staking, native plants, water works, planned overflows)
Native plant communities for different microclimates on your land (sunny slopes, wet boggy lowlands, high and windy)
Strategies for resilience when power and water are not available (alternative cooking, heating, waste disposal)
A primer on the permaculture ethos, principles, and frameworkviewed through the lens of this storm to illustrate how we can use this mindset to build more resilient landscapes
Ways to get involved with local government to bring about change in your local jurisdictions (I serve on the Planning Board for my hometown. There are many opportunities to get involved and get a seat at the table where important decisions are made.)
Recommendations and contact lists for local services. I am actively seeking recommendations for arborists, contractors, equipment operators, etc. from people who share my ethos so that I can connect like-minded people with contractors who can do the work to the holistic standards required.
A bit of poetry and prose along the way, if you'll permit me. I admit my verbosity, and I will try to be clear, concise, and edifying as best as I am able. I'm also inclined to expressive language and I appreciate when all things are beautiful, even the words we use to to share the simplest of ideas.
And so much more. There is no end to the engagement with the ecosystem of our planet.
Passive, permanent earthworks and year-round living roots hold water and soil on your slopes.