Proud Roads

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>When Hurricane Helene tore through Southern Appalachia it left behind more than toppled trees and broken bridges-it rewrote the map of what it means to belong.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Proud Roads</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Kelly Riedesel chronicles the storm's long wake: the hundred-year-old elders uprooted overnight the X marks of rescue teams still on front doors the way every gust of wind every snapping branch startles the body long after the rain stops. Moving through prose-poems lyric fragments and echoes of Indigenous storytelling Riedesel holds space for the uncounted losses-dignity buried in makeshift shelters roads rendered flesh at the bottom of chasms-while also charting the routes back to each other.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Here survival is not just a matter of endurance but of care: the neighbor with a chainsaw clearing your way out the mules carrying supplies over washed-out hollers the children watching what care looks like in real time. Even in the face of climate trauma </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Proud Roads</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> insists on the roads-both physical and spiritual-that hold a community together:</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>We are flooding back love </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>standing up when we can without comment</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>sitting down when we must without guilt </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>doing the things that keep us proud.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>On the first anniversary of the storm these poems serve as an artifact and an offering-proof that the proud roads of this place are still here still carrying those who walk them.</span></p><p></p>