Post-storm pics hopefully updated throughout the day today

So, the neighbors and I survived the storm, so far. No one’s ventured out, yet. This is the driveway just down from the hermitage yesterday. Not a good sign for Holy Souls Mountain road just further down the way. I may venture out to get some pictures. All the rain turned to ice, so it’s rather dangerous.

A town in Georgia just over the border from N.C., was destroyed. People lost their lives in this storm. We pray for the repose of their souls. Hail Mary…

Here’s a pic of the steps of the school in town a reader sent in. They finally let the buses go when all was mayhem what with trees down, flooding, washouts.

Of course, not all is destruction and mayhem. Storms and their effects can be quite beautiful, providing an insight into the power of nature all around us, a majesty, really, which we might not otherwise notice.

I recall being up in the Alps, on the South side of “Cervino” with a certain Cardinal, when, looking steeply down into the cavernous valleys below, the tops of boiling, roiling cloudbanks were to be seen rising, but not rising, corralled by the unseen seeming magnetic force of the mountains, to which they clung with surreal tenacity, perhaps hung up on the pines, which themselves shrank in size in proportion to the elevation of the mountain, perhaps again, not because of lack of oxygen, but sucked down by that mysterious magnetic force. The mountains themselves laughed at gravity, throwing themselves exultantly high into the sky as they were doing.

Anyway, in Blue Ridge Mountains, we have waterfalls. Here’s the waterfall on Holy Souls Mountain, vastly much calmer compared to what it would have been during the downpour yesterday, but still beautiful, regardless of the eyes of the beholder:

More to come…