First Light

First Light

Before the flood, I spent most clear nights in my backyard staring at Saturn through a cheap 90mm telescope.

Some nights the atmosphere was too unstable to focus clearly, but every once in a while the air would settle and the planet would sharpen into view—rings, cloud bands, and once, one of its moons slowly transiting across its surface.

Around that time, I saw a fireball while driving home at sunset—a streak of white fire against the dark orange sky. The next day, I ordered my first smart telescope. It had autofocus and could automatically track galaxies, calibrate itself against the stars, and stack light from objects millions of light-years away. I couldn’t wait to finally see deep-space objects from my backyard in Asheville.

Meteorologists said the storm wasn’t expected to be severe. I believed them. That’s why I had left my cat—Henry at the house when I drove to Cincinnati a few days earlier. Thursday at noon, a friend convinced me to turn around and go home before conditions worsened.

Blinding sheets of rain and gusting winds—broken branches and closed roads stood between me and Henry.

At every turn, it seemed like something wanted to stop me. I crawled past jackknifed trucks, fallen branches, and the occasional stranded car. GPS reroutes. Fresh potholes.

A loud crack echoed through the car. Stunned, I felt something slam the undercarriage, and Althea—my chiweenie—jumped into my lap, startled.

My alignment was seriously bent and my floor mat started getting wet. I kept driving.

Finally, I reached the last stretch—the pass on I-40 West.

Sometime later, the road slid into the river, but I was home.

I frantically packed a bag of clothes and set it beside my door with my Martin guitar, pet supplies, and a few groceries.

At midnight I walked down to check the offshoot near my house. Usually still and shallow—now a river. It was deep and raging—creeping up to the street.

At 2:00 a.m. on September 27, 2024, I was fleeing for my life—driving through the rising floodwaters of Hurricane Helene.

My neighborhood looked like a flowing lake in my rearview mirror.

Fifteen miles became a gauntlet. At 3 a.m., the Red Roof Inn became a harbor of refuge.

Still, I was glad to be alive with Henry and Althea.

By sunrise, my house was gone.

My business was gone.

Everything I owned now fit inside my car.

I tried to sleep. Couldn’t.

At 5 a.m., the electricity went out. Two hours later, so did the cell service. Unlike every other place in town, the Red Roof Inn had running water.

We were stranded and isolated. I might as well have been on Mars.

The morning came drizzling and cool, with wreckage everywhere.

I drove my totaled car to check on a friend but fallen trees and downed wires turned me back; a small mob had gathered at the library, people holding up phones for a signal I couldn’t find. The soaked floor mat smelled like mildew and river water.

By ten I was in line at the only open gas station, watching a man a few cars back ferry a five-gallon water jug to his tank, trip after trip, until he paused mid-walk and seemed to calculate the need around him against his own—too many, he decided, he couldn’t help them all, and anyway he needed water.

I told him I had running water.

He gave me five gallons of gas; I still paid him for it.

Everywhere people were scared, thirsty, hungry, panic hanging in the air like weather, but Asheville stayed civil—neighbors helping neighbors, groceries shared in motel parking lots.

Without any way to know if I still had a house, I drove toward it until a police roadblock delivered the bad news.

I tried to leave—north, south, anywhere with cell service—but every bridge and road out of northwestern North Carolina was down, something I only learned by trying. With less than a quarter tank, I turned back to the Red Roof Inn, defeated.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Saturday was a blur. News came by means of rumor. The Chamber of Commerce said we had been set back 20 years. Over a hundred had died. Many more were injured. The hospital—understaffed. Relief vehicles lined the roads, unable to reach us. The electricity could take weeks to repair. NPR reporters on foot carried news back and forth.

“All this in a night.”

That night I lay on the roof of my car beneath a sky darkened by the blackout. The constellations above Asheville remained unchanged. For the first time since the flood began, I felt hope calmly overtake the fear.

Sunday I saw my house. It was completely destroyed. Broken pieces of my life lay scattered across the mudslide where my lawn used to be. The red shed housing my art studio had been washed away. Eventually I found it—inaccessible and perched in the branches of a tree, hanging perilously over a ravine.

Now homeless, I went to visit my dad in Philadelphia. At dinner, he reminded me that my grandmother’s Bible—the one he had given me years earlier—had survived the flood of ’72 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Philly, my hometown, wasn’t my home anymore. The orange-lit sky held no stars.

A week later, my dad hugged me and we said our goodbyes.

I saw Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, like a ghost following me across the twilight sky as I drove west to Cincinnati.

Friends welcomed me to the Queen City. With the comet overhead, I stayed on their couch for a few days before getting a hotel room.

I heard that Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead had died. It hit me like a truck. I spent two whole days walled into my room like a tomb. I was still grieving when I got the call. Apparently, my house was partly salvageable and FEMA needed to assess the damages.

Arriving back in Asheville was like arriving back in time. The city felt like a town being built. Roadwork and construction narrowed the lanes of travel. At lunchtime, people formed lines at trailers for hot meals. Cases of canned water were set on sidewalks. Downtown felt empty except for the displaced staying in hotels.

Amid the chaos of reconstruction, something heavy quietly dissolved inside me. That’s how I knew I was home.

My smart telescope had been waiting at the UPS Store. Eagerly I retrieved it and took it to my Airbnb.

I invited a few friends for dinner. After we ate, we played music together—pausing after each song to look at the galactic footage my telescope had captured. The almost full moon lit my friends’ smiles and twinkled in their eyes.

I woke up early to meet my FEMA representative—still I was late. Her truck was parked in the disaster zone where the remains of my house stood like a terrible memory. Sitting in her truck as the rain began falling, I learned I didn’t qualify for relief.

Then she drove away, and I stood in the rain—half frozen under a tree.

I was ready to go, but with wide eyes, Althea cocked her head to the side and looked at me. I nodded and began to look for anything worth keeping. We cautiously entered through the hole where the front door had been. Everything was broken. I stepped over exposed pipes and cracked wood—then under a board I saw a guitar case. Inside, the guitar was untouched. Quickly I found a few other things:

A small box holding some of my mother’s ashes. A wooden jewel box containing something sentimental. A Grateful Dead poster that remained on a wall—framed. A 90 mm telescope still in its case. And my grandmother’s Bible survived another flood.

I dedicated the next few days to house hunting. I found a rental I could afford and arranged to meet the landlord for the keys. As we talked, we pieced together that we had already met nearly four years earlier in Cincinnati. I had gone to see the Steep Canyon Rangers, and somewhere during their second set I decided to move to Asheville. After the show, I found the bassist and thanked him for helping me make up my mind. Now he was handing me my keys.

Thanksgiving in San Francisco was new clothes, old friends, and late nights sharpening my astrophotography.

The cold California coast taught me loneliness again.

After months of temporary places, I came back home to Asheville on New Year’s Day. Astronomers say the debris field of Cassiopeia A still carries the structure of the star that exploded centuries ago. Looking back, I think people do too.