In the Middle of a Wide, Wild River

This entry is a part of a series of vignettes covering the “Great Flood of 1916,” which caused damage across five states in the southeast. Biltmore Village.July 16, 1916 Tired, trembling, and terrified, seventeen-year-old Katherine Lipe clung to a tree at the Biltmore Lodge Gate just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. She was fifty-feet fromContinue reading “In the Middle of a Wide, Wild River”

In Floating Fragments: The Great Freshet of 1840

Monday, May 25, 1840– The turbid waters of the Oconee swelled. The artery of a nascent Athens community revolted. The rains began that afternoon and created an injurious effect: the Greatest Natural Disaster in Athens’s History. For days it rained relentlessly. Banks gave way in the Oconee and Savannah watersheds. Milledgeville (then the state capital), Augusta,Continue reading “In Floating Fragments: The Great Freshet of 1840”

On the West Virginia Floods

Disasters, large and small, are only as damaging as we allow. Gone should be the days where the publicity surrounding calamities focus on the seemingly uncontrollable winds, rivers, and rains that kill and destroy. I do not speak of dams and other man-made pseudo scientific “cures” for the disasters. No, I criticize the very realContinue reading “On the West Virginia Floods”

A Cold, Rainy Way

It’s cold. In fact, it’s freezing. I checked my “spanking new” iPhone and the app told me it would be 60 degrees today. It lied. My feet are soaked. My face is tingling with abrasion and my books are moist. My shoes, my socks, my backpack, my umbrella, the papers within my backpack, my books,Continue reading “A Cold, Rainy Way”

Wild, Wonderful

Last night Nature’s progression became an inconvenience for man. A storm moved in. As the skies filled with moisture, turning every shade of gray, and replaced the sun-streaked blue and white landscape from the early afternoon with a dark tumultuous atmosphere in the evening, I drove my cantankerous automobile over limbs and leaves, which swirledContinue reading “Wild, Wonderful”