OPINION: Helene invites us to reflect on our way of life

Most have been left with the wrong impression of Hurricane Helene. Was she really so tawdry, vindictive? Regrettably, she poured out her misery onto every street corner she ventured. Hearing the stories, seeing the devastation in Tennessee and North Carolina, it’s easy to come away with that opinion. I suppose she’s just mad after attention, but otherwise kindhearted. Scarcely a soul appreciates her sharp wit.

I’ve taken to personifying hurricanes. (As do the folks who name them). Doing so shields me from a distant, impersonal understanding that may leave me helpless, windswept. Paying a little attention to each hurricane’s unique temperament, I feel that along with the anguish will come insights into our relationship with wind and water. Our culture has decided to turn its back on Helene and her ancestral home. We erect walls and fill sandbags to keep her out.

I know — only if her and her ilk would stay in their proper place, out at sea. That is the origin of the dance: warm oceans where she begins her slight pirouette in tepid water, and by the time she reaches the Gulf of Mexico and its 86-degree cauldron she spins like an entranced dervish. If she never were to reach land in time, she’d faint.

Bridges and hospitals got swallowed up as Helene took her final gasp. People got swallowed up. Many were left starving and many more remain hungry and without shelter. The news crews though, appeared well-nourished. They parrot febrile phrases like “this disaster is unprecedented,” and “this really feels like a post-apocalyptic scene.”

A tired, middle-aged man appeared disoriented, both eyes unable to stay steady for the cable-TV interviewer, he rambled on about seeing a casket pass him in the current. Then almost seemed to take pleasure in answering a question about the cause of such a calamity. “These things happen; it’s just nature,” he said.

Just nature? You mean like those obese kids down in the holler with type 2 diabetes is just another example of nature?! Or maybe you mean like those drenched, treeless hillsides that give way to smother whole hamlets is just nature? Am I getting close?

Put a lid on it, Todd. Even the likes of Helene would admonish my hasty bad manners.

In my impatience, I too will lose sight of the rain-soaked invitation she brings. There is a law of physics that says for every degree Celsius increase, the air can hold 7% more water vapor. As sure as we boil water atop our stoves, we are all bound up in that vapor. How can we not be?

That is her invitation: for us to see that intimate connection. Even as anxious patients are being airlifted off the roof of the hospital it’s our job to re-establish that relationship with her. “As the world continues to warm,” wrote one researcher, “the destructive power of hurricanes will extend progressively farther inland.”

The Arby’s and the KFC in Asheville may never come back. Let’s hope not. Helene’s invitation, if nothing else, is to exhale into the question: after all, what is the good life? She sarcastically winks, “Hey big fella — want more roast beef, more deep-fried thighs, more strip malls, more first-class travel to exotic destinations? Selfies with Mickey and Donald in December? Step this way, gorgeous.” We are becoming better acquainted with the resulting water vapor and whirling dervishes of the good life.

No one will listen though. The town leaders, the governor, the worker bees will chant the mantra of building back, bigger, better and stronger. They won’t accept the invitation to shift course; they’ll refuse to float on her more benevolent waters.

After years of globetrotting, Todd J. Broadman finds himself writing from his perch on the Palouse and loving the view. His policy briefs can be found at US Resist News: https://www.usresistnews.org.