Asheville: A Love Story
The Blue Ridge Mountains. Photo by Quinn Corte, 2021.
Asheville: A Love Story
My parents moved from Houston to Asheville twelve years ago. It was a pivotal moment in my family’s timeline. For my parents, it meant finally leaving Texas and living somewhere good for their souls. They found a home in the breathtaking mountain forest and moved to a town with liberal politics and artists and musicians. The move nourished them in massive ways, and that made my heart so happy.
I didn’t expect to fall in love with Asheville. But I fell hard.
At first, I fell in love with the vibe. It was so different from Boston. In Asheville, being outside with loved ones and enjoying life was more important than making a lot of money or doing impressive things. “Strangers” greeted you enthusiastically when you passed on a trail, instead of avoiding eye contact. There were festivals almost every weekend of summer—rowdy music, quirky craftspeople, potions and paintings for sale, colorful face paint, comfort food trucks, twirling children in fairy wings. Everyone moved through their days a little slower, lingering over conversations and meals. I noticed that people didn't constantly act like they had a better place to be. What could be better?
Over the first several years of visiting, I fell in love with the businesses. Heavens to Betsy, the restaurants! You know how some restaurants have a soul? In Asheville, eating out was an experience. Fantastic food made by good, real people. And the ART! Asheville had big warehouses full of art and antiques that made you squeal with delight and blissfully lose hours. And the little shops! Magical witchy hippie dens with crystals lining the walls, boutiques with the best ethically-made clothes and salespeople that dress like Stevie Nicks, coffee shops with Adirondack chairs all along the river, bookstores that felt like wonderlands, and a store called Madam Clutterbucket’s Neurodiverse Universe. Need I say more?
A few years ago, Asheville is where I fell in love with myself. Around 2018, I was going through a dark time. It felt like my life and identity were unraveling, and I was so lost. A series of magical happenings led me to a retreat called Soul Fire. The retreat was held on the most breathtaking and sentient land—it was in another realm but somehow just 15 minutes from my parents’ home. The rituals, play, and sisterhood from that week changed my life. I reclaimed missing parts of my soul, including a very ancient part of me that can only be described as a woodland creek fairy. I returned the following year for another retreat, and through those powerful experiences I found my people and came home to myself.
At some point, the rest of my family fell in love with Asheville, too. My mom’s sister bought the house next door to my parents. They built a “sister bridge” through the woods to connect the two houses. During sticky July evenings, when all my cousins and their kids gathered for reunions, fireflies surrounded the bridge like starlight. When our matriarch—my beloved Wina—passed away in Asheville, our family created Dragonfly Circle, an area with a swing and a big tree where we laid her ashes to rest.
During the pandemic, I lived in Asheville for a year and fell in love with the land. I wasn’t working in the traditional sense, so I had swaths of time, space, and solitude to explore the area’s rushing rivers, mountain trails, and stunning vistas.
Tucked away in the mountains and somehow magically hidden from tourists, I found a spot on a particular creek in Western North Carolina. This quickly became my Special Place. When I climbed the massive tree roots to get to the sandy riverbank, it felt like crossing through a veil into another world. I could be my true forest fairy self, scaling sun-warmed boulders and watching pink mimosa blossoms fall around my shoulders as I swam in the dazzling water. It’s the place I go in my imagination whenever I’m scared or distressed. The kind of place you'd make up as the perfect sanctuary—except it actually existed.
At some point, Asheville became my home.
I don’t live there full-time, though moving there is my dream. I spend 6-8 weeks a year there now, mostly because it feels unbearable to be away for too long. It’s where my family and my friends gather for retreats, holidays, and to mark big thresholds. It’s where I slept curled next to my grandmother when she left this earth—and where I go to feel close to her. It’s where I go to reconnect with myself.
But this isn’t just my love story.
Everyone who loves or lives in Western North Carolina has a romance to tell. I can feel the beating heart of everyone’s stories—how the Appalachian mountains called to them and what the rivers have given them. Perhaps the love story starts with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who have been tending and celebrating Appalachia since long before Asheville was called Asheville. I have no doubt the romance between humans and those mountains will continue for generations to come.
I’ve fallen head-over-heels for Asheville. I’m hopelessly in love with its vibe, people, and businesses. I feel so blessed for the ways Asheville has cradled me, nourished me, delighted me, and infused my life with magic.
And now, after Hurricane Helene, I’m falling in love with Asheville’s resilience.
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Two weeks ago, a storm from the west collided with Hurricane Helene over the Appalachian Mountains in Western North Carolina. Water raged down into all the rivers. The soil was soaked, loosening root systems and making trees vulnerable to the powerful winds. Trees crashed into homes and buildings, flood waters rose to roofs in some areas, and a spin-off tornado flattened an entire area. It happened so suddenly to an inland area that’s not supposed to have hurricanes, and it left no time to prepare. So many lives were lost. The devastation is unfathomable.
In the wake of the trauma, all of us are counting blessings and losses. We’re gathering them all up in one big basket as more and more news comes in. As my friend Jaime put it, we’re naming “what the river took and what it spared.” We’re putting our basket of prayers on a massive invisible altar, giving thanks and reeling with grief.
The hurricane spared my precious parents and our two family homes. And it spared the lives and bodies of my friends. The more horrific stories I hear, the more I can’t believe how lucky we are. I’m truly on my knees with relief that they’re alive and well. But they have all experienced varying levels of emotional trauma and unmet needs.
Lives, homes, and livelihoods were lost in my friend’s communities. There’s no water in Asheville, and no estimate for when water will be back (they literally have to rebuild the water distribution system). Many areas are still without power and internet. Most of my friends have made the heart-wrenching decision to leave town temporarily, because the infrastructure can’t support them. They are at times contending with survivor’s guilt, shock, grief, confusion, rage, fear, hope, and how to help.
The French Broad River flooded the entire River Arts District (RAD) all the way to the roofs. The city had recently poured tons of money into this beloved area, building roads and bike paths that lead to big industrial buildings crammed with art studios and shops. All destroyed. RAD was very special to me (and countless others). Marquee, 12 Bones, and Summit Coffee were staples of my Asheville experience—quirky, kind, thriving businesses that can’t ever be replicated. I’m heartbroken for the many-dozens of RAD artists who lost their studios and an irreplaceable trove of arts, crafts, and antiques.
Miraculously, charming downtown Asheville didn’t sustain much damage—hopefully preserving the livelihoods for those restaurant and shop workers. It’s my hope that downtown can eventually be a small anchor to help sustain a bit of tourism during the years of rebuilding.
Of course, the people most impacted by this disaster won’t be showing up on my Instagram feed or in the lists of Go Fund Me pages. Asheville’s infrastructure depends on tourism. And tourism thrives only because of the restaurant and hotel workers, the concert venue crews and bartenders, the buskers on the street corners, and the artists and craftspeople. Not only have most of them lost their jobs, but also their homes. Many of them can’t afford to live in the city, and their underserved mountain communities were hit hardest by the flooding.
But the people of Western North Carolina are smart, skilled, organized and resilient as hell. If this disaster happened in Boston, we’d all be screwed. City folks have no life skills and no sense of interdependence. But down in Appalachia, people know how to survive. When my parents were trapped, neighbors showed up at their house with a truck full of chainsaws. They spent hours clearing huge fallen trees from the driveway. I’ve heard countless stories of towns and communities banding together and bailing themselves out of crisis.
I have a connection in Marshall, NC, so I’ve been following that town’s story on social media. Marshall is a tiny town on the river. It has an iconic little Main Street with diners and art galleries and an old jail-turned-hotel. The flooding in Marshall was unbelievable. Almost every building and home is now filled to the brim with toxic mud and debris. But wow, that community is close. They set up a hub for supplies, volunteers, and safety gear outside of the town, away from the danger, and then they started morning meetings and daily work. Hard work. Old men with construction equipment are clearing rubble, shop owners are digging out, and neighbors are washing mud off paintings and hanging them on clotheslines.
Remember my special place by the creek? It’s just outside of Marshall, and I’m sure it’s devastated. I saw it once after a routine rainstorm, and the creek turned into a raging brown ocean. I’m certain the trail and most of the trees were taken by the river. It feels privileged—maybe even selfish—to grieve a tiny corner of the natural world, when so many people lost lives. But, I'm deeply mourning the loss of my precious, sacred place in the woods. Or at least, I'm mourning the way things used to be. Mourning the end of an era.
I feel like part of my soul was taken by the river. I’m not the only one.
Nothing will ever be the same. No one who ever loved Asheville will be the same.
But the land and people of Western North Carolina are resilient.
Together, we'll write a new chapter of our Asheville love story.
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