I feel certain that by now most of you have read the good news about Riverview’s experience with Hurricane Helene. Just in case you are as technically challenged as I am or off the grid as I tend to be in my retirement years, please allow me to share the good news.
In the last few hours before Hurricane Helene made landfall, it shifted about 45 miles eastward, and that made ALL THE DIFFERENCE for us. We suffered absolutely no damage , and didn’t even lose power. Since we live at the end of the electrical transmission lines, and those lines have thousands of acres of pine trees near them, you can imagine how calm it was here. Years ago one of our Southern sages wrote to our congressman saying, “Dawson, you gotta do something about these here power outages. It’s gotten so bad that every time a mule farts, we lose power.” That congressman was a friend of mine, and shared the letter with me.
However, the purpose of this blog is to share a message of hope for recovery! On October 10th, 2018 Hurricane Michael slammed into Riverview with 130 mph winds the week before we were scheduled to open. We suffered damage to 90% of our buildings, and lost two million dollars worth of timber.
I’ve always believed that the flood of 1994 was my finest hour. I also firmly believe that Hurricane Michael was Cader IV’s finest hour. He prioritized repairs and woods cleaning from the most to least important tasks. He then gave his excellent management staff different tasks which they performed with herculean effort. While it was impossible to put all of our hunting courses back in pristine shape, we managed to get roughly 60% of our courses huntable. Thank goodness we have more land and hunting courses than we need to handle a full house.
As for me during this period, I must admit to being past my prime by then, but must have thought that I wasn’t. While cutting, pulling, and piling tree limbs in 110+ temp/humidity index one day, I suddenly begin to see little green men running in and out of the limb piles. Cader IV came upon me and said, “ Dad, you are going to kill yourself, and taking you to the hospital is going to slow us down. Why don’t you go into the office and try to line up our insurance adjuster. Get us an appointment, and you stay with him every step of the way to ‘sweet talk’ him as we say down here.” That’s exactly what I did, and am proud to say that I was much better at that than manual labor although my pride was hurt a bit.
I have close friends from Florida to western North Carolina. Those whom I have been able to reach are sharing horror stories with me. Let me encourage you to divide up your recovery efforts into achievable tranches. If you look at the entire magnitude of devastation, it is overwhelming! But, if you take it a section at a time, you WILL RECOVER! Riverview is living proof of that. With the exception of having less pine trees, although we still have too many for a number of our hunters, you would be hard pressed to find any vestiges of that awful time.
In closing, I will leave you with two thoughts, neither of which originated in my wee brain:
1) THAT WHICH DOESN’T KILL US MAKES US STRONGER.
2] TOUGH TIMES DON’T LAST BUT TOUGH FOLKS DO.
Please know that everyone impacted by Hurricane Helene is in our thoughts and prayers! Oh, and if you happen to see little green men while cleaning up, stop and drink more water, and find some shade. May God bless you and your families.