The Mountain Refuge Reconsidered

There’s a certain unspoken promise implied when you move to a place like Asheville, nestled deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains and protected, ostensibly, from the kinds of calamities that besiege coastal or more urban locales. Erica Scott, a wedding photographer who relocated here from California some 16 years ago, certainly believed that she was trading in the perpetual threat of natural disasters for something more stable, more dependable—something with the feeling of permanence. You can understand why. Asheville, with its cool mountain air and a geography far removed from the immediate dangers of the Atlantic coast, seemed the sort of place that would remain untouched by the increasingly unpredictable climate. That sense of sanctuary, that feeling of being safe from climate change, had become an almost unquestioned part of the city’s identity.

At least, until Hurricane Helene arrived.

What Helene did, more than flood basements and knock out power lines, was flood the collective imagination of Asheville’s residents with a new, disquieting reality: there may be no place, however insulated by mountains, that remains truly safe anymore. The storm didn’t even strike directly—it made landfall some 500 miles away in Florida, yet by the time its remnants reached Asheville, they unleashed a torrent of water and mud that left parts of the city, particularly along the French Broad River, unrecognizable.

The Long History of Floods (and Forgetting)

It’s not as though Asheville hasn’t seen floods before. The French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, which wind their way through the region, have been prone to swelling long before climate change was on anyone’s radar. The Great Flood of 1916, for instance, was catastrophic, a pair of storms swelling the rivers to biblical proportions, killing scores of people. It was a calamity, yes, but it had the feel of an anomaly—something that happens once every hundred years or so. In fact, in 2016, a century after that flood, the city proudly published a piece on its website, confidently titled, “100 Years After the Flood of 1916, the City of Asheville is Ready for the Next One.”

There’s a certain tragic irony in that headline now. Hurricane Helene was the next one, but the city's preparation, despite its best efforts, was no match for the relentless force of a changing climate. The idea that a city can “be ready” for such a disaster speaks to a certain hubris—the belief that nature can somehow be controlled or mitigated through human planning. And yet, here was Asheville, 500 miles from the storm’s landfall, being overpowered by rainfall that was never supposed to reach it.

The Booming Asheville Mythology

Asheville has always been a kind of magnet for those seeking a certain kind of life—a better life, if you will. In the late 19th century, George W. Vanderbilt II, industrial heir and visionary, built the sprawling Biltmore Estate here, a kind of testament to the idea that this place could be more than just a quiet mountain town. It could be a refuge, a playground for the wealthy and creative, a place where inspiration strikes like lightning from the surrounding peaks. In the mid-20th century, Black Mountain College brought pioneering artists—Merce Cunningham, Cy Twombly, Willem de Kooning—to the area, cementing Asheville’s reputation as a cultural beacon.

The mythology of Asheville as both an artistic haven and a retreat for spiritual seekers only grew from there. By the 1990s, New Age adherents had started flocking to the city, drawn by the belief that Asheville, like Sedona in Arizona, sat on a powerful "energy vortex," some metaphysical force that pulled in those seeking higher consciousness and healing. And as the city’s profile grew, so did its allure for the kind of people who look for both enlightenment and a strong craft beer.

By the mid-2010s, Asheville had become something of a boomtown. The River Arts District, once a neglected area of old warehouses along the French Broad, transformed into the epicenter of a burgeoning arts scene. Brewers followed, attracted by the clean mountain water—an essential ingredient for great beer—and soon Asheville was "Beer City USA," with 42 breweries producing inventive ales that drew visitors from across the country. Food followed beer, and soon inventive chefs were setting up shop, giving the city a national reputation as a "foodtopia"—a term that carries its own sense of promise, a utopia with great food.

But as the city flourished, so did the pressures. Housing costs skyrocketed, pushing out longtime residents in favor of wealthier newcomers. Gentrification became a central issue, with a city report noting that 36 percent of Asheville households were “housing cost burdened,” meaning they were spending more than 30 percent of their income just to live here. In a place that was supposed to be a haven, many were already finding it difficult to stay afloat—long before the floodwaters arrived.

The Storm That Froze the Boom

Then came Hurricane Helene, which, in a matter of hours, turned the city’s thriving River Arts District into a mud-soaked disaster zone. Streets became impassable; breweries, galleries, and restaurants shuttered under the weight of flood damage. And just like that, all the energy of Asheville’s boom was suspended, caught in a freeze-frame of confusion and desperation.

It wasn’t just the physical damage that paralyzed the city—it was the loss of basic utilities. By Monday, most of Asheville was without running water, and cell service was patchy at best. Downtown bookstores and coffee shops, once bustling with tourists and locals alike, sat closed, their windows dark. A sign outside Malaprop’s, the beloved downtown bookstore, captured the mood succinctly: “Closed. This is Katie. Be safe. I will try and contact you when I am able.”

The situation quickly became desperate for many. At Battery Park Apartments, a building that houses many elderly and disabled residents, people had resorted to gathering creek water just to flush their toilets—a grim necessity that only underscored how vulnerable even the most basic services had become. Meanwhile, others lined up at stores, scrounging for bottled water and whatever food remained on the shelves.

A Community Struggling to Cope

Amid the chaos, there were glimmers of the Asheville that many had come to know and love—a community that, even in crisis, finds ways to help one another. Cyclists delivered water to those in need; neighbors banded together to clear fallen trees. Strangers offered rides to those stranded without transportation. And for a moment, the city’s “communitarian spirit” seemed to rise above the mud and floodwaters.

But as David Shoham, a local resident, noted with a hint of prescience: “If this goes on another week, though, it might start to crumble.”

How long that communal goodwill can last remains an open question. Disasters have a way of bringing people together in the immediate aftermath, but they also have a way of revealing the deeper fractures in a community. The housing crisis, the rising cost of living, the influx of newcomers—all of these tensions were already bubbling beneath the surface in Asheville. The storm simply forced them into the open.

The Broken Promise of Safety

For people like Erica Scott, who moved here believing Asheville was a safe harbor from the chaos of the world, the storm has shattered that illusion. “This was a sacred, safe place,” she said. “And it’s been breached, too.”

The breach isn’t just physical—it’s psychological, emotional, existential. The sense of safety that once came with living in the mountains, far from the coast, has been eroded by the rising tides of climate change. And the realization that no place is truly safe, that no geography can shield us from the consequences of a warming planet, is one that Asheville’s residents—and, by extension, all of us—will have to grapple with.

How do you rebuild after that kind of breach? How do you restore not just the buildings and roads but the belief that there’s somewhere, anywhere, that can offer refuge? The answers, much like the floodwaters themselves, are murky at best. What’s clear is that Asheville’s days of feeling invulnerable are over.