Editor's note: After Sara filed this story but before it was published, her power came back on after being off for 13 days. The last section has been added to reflect that.
I've lived in Leicester, an unincorporated township northwest of Asheville, with my elderly mother and stepfather since 2014. It's a lovely area with lovely people, and our mountain home has the most beautiful view I've ever seen.
Compared to most areas, Leicester made it through the storm pretty well. (In my first story for CharlotteFive, I reported on a local diner, the Salty Goat Grill, keeping folks fed since the storm hit.) Lots of downed trees, and some damage to roads. But as far as I know, we escaped the worst. We are truly lucky.
But we also have been without power, water and internet for 13 days in our neighborhood of about 15 homes, and managing everyday tasks with two elderly parents and two cats gets a bit harder each day.
It's amazing how much longer it takes to accomplish the most basic of tasks. Each day, we drive five minutes down our winding mountain road to the creek to fill multiple laundry detergent bottles with water for hand washing and toilet flushing. Our semi-rural neighborhood did not experience any flooding, so while I wouldn't drink that water without boiling it, it works just fine for those other needs.
The flushing is particularly challenging if you're elderly and have less upper body strength. Whether you're pouring the water straight into the bowl to create a vacuum or pouring it into the tank so you can flush, it's impossible for my elderly mother. This has been a serious issue in senior living facilities around the region, as reported by volunteers of multiple "flush brigades."
Even making coffee feels more complicated. Or perhaps it's just the realization that you're boiling water on the stove for a drab cup of instant rather than a cup of nicely percolated grounds that makes the task feel both more necessary and less fulfilling.
We're lucky to have a gas stove, but cooking has its limits when you know you don't have the ability to wash the dishes as well as you'd like. We're paper plating and plastic forking everything that we can, but hot meals require pots and pans, and the dirty ones are piling up.
Unlike many areas, we haven't had too much of a challenge getting food or -- most importantly -- drinking water. But the selection has narrowed significantly, given that our freezer is "powered" by four bags of steadily liquefying ice. (Ice has been in short supply at our local grocery store, even when rationed to two bags per family.)
The freezer mostly holds frozen butter and some egg whites now, while we have a smaller styrofoam cooler to hold more quasi-perishable items like smoked salmon, long defrosted peas, and some feta and provolone. Bread with peanut butter features heavily on the menu, though tonight we're having some broccoli and carrots steamed on the stove to go along with potatoes baked on the grill.
Your world shrinks in times like these. Not only because you stop using the rooms in your house that rely on electricity to fully light up, but also because your days run on the natural clock of the sun.
It's completely dark by around 8 p.m. most nights, and our camping lantern, small flashlights and candles don't provide enough light to do even the lightest of chores or indulge in some bedtime reading. And, of course, even with cell service, we can't waste batteries on our devices.
One benefit is that I worked more efficiently this fortnight. Whether conducting interviews or writing articles, I don't get distracted going down internet rabbit holes or get precious over each word.
That said, however, when I interviewed two people in Morganton about their volunteer efforts, those conversations stretched for a long time. I could tell they needed to share, and I could think of no better use of my phone battery than to listen.
We each of us have a book's worth of tales to tell about surviving this experience, whether we barely lost power or had our homes washed away.
Without our neighbors and their generators, we'd be up the creek. We've charged devices daily, used their Starlink satellite on that first weekend when cell service failed and even taken a hot shower. We'll be forever grateful. A generator will be our first major purchase once we have some normalcy restored.
After a few days where gas was in short supply and people waited for hours in line, we've been able to fill up easily. It's nice to know that, in a pinch, we could drive off somewhere. But where would we go? No place is like home, and I live in semi-hope that the power is coming soon.
I'm not holding my breath, though; earlier this week a chainsaw crew finally came to remove fallen tree branches that have rested almost jauntily against our power lines, and someone tightened the lines.
But that was a few days ago. A crew came again out Wednesday morning, but it was simply another tree trimming crew. Multiple calls to Duke Energy insist that a power restoration crew was dispatched, but it's clear a communication breakdown is happening.
And while I can hang on despite the cooler weather up here on the mountaintop, I can increasingly see the strain on my mother. In the starkest terms, this experience will likely shorten her life. Perhaps by only days or weeks, but it's still heartbreaking.
In your worst moments it's easy to feel forgotten by the rest of the world as they bake and scroll on Instagram, while you spread yet another slice of bread with peanut butter or lug the flush bottle toward the bathroom. (Also as my mom just puts her noodles in the microwave and forgets it's not working.)
All the same, despite some shortened tempers and real fatigue, I think we've hung in there pretty well. My heart goes out to those people who don't even have a home to navigate, much less the anticipation of power or water anytime this month.
I'm currently needed here at home, but once our oxygen mask is back on in the form of the magical innovation of electricity, I'll be doing what I can to help others get out of the dark and back on their feet next.
When the power returned early on the evening of Oct. 9, it did so not with a bang but with gentle hums and beeps. For the first 10 minutes or so, I wandered the house, not quite trusting in our good fortune.
It took my stepfather turning on the taps and flushing the toilets to drive home just what it meant. "Is anyone else in a bit of disbelief, almost like a caged animal set free and too afraid to trust the grass?" I wrote in our neighborhood group chat.
About half an hour later, though, we began to roar back to life ourselves. I turned on our Wi-Fi router and got a signal. In our excitement to clean dishes, we forgot to switch on the right valve and had a water supply error message.
In the two days following, we've done about 10 loads of laundry, five dishwasher cycles and cleaned every shelf in the fridge, which currently has a skeleton crew of food: a giant vat of vegetable soup, butter and condiments, a bit of cheese and about a case of bottled water. Having not just power but clean, reliable well water is a true gift; most municipal water systems in the region will be under boil advisories for a while. The irony that it was an overabundance of water that has deprived us of this most precious resource has not escaped me.
Now that we're not in rapid response mode, the exhaustion has hit; I've taken more naps in the past two days than I did in the 13 before them.
It will take a while for a normal routine to return, even in our relatively unscathed household.
But once I recharge my batteries (and buy a major battery pack that can charge multiple devices for days at a time), I'll be ready to help recover and rebuild.