Post-Storm...Clearing pathways

Loves,

The following are images from my friend Cynthia Berger's home in Lyme, New Hampshire. There was a terrible Nor'easter storm that did overwhelming damage, taking about 80% of their trees. (Sparing their home and barn, but leveling a newer guest house/ tree house her dad was building.)

The scene her father initially describes below, coupled with the appearance and help of others, neighbors, takes my heart to crazy places....

I'm holding this story and these images alongside other tales of devastation we've encountered this week. Whether it's natural disaster; violence and terror on a campus; the marked passing of a loved one; or the internal strife surfacing from choice and discernment -- the psychic and spirit levels of this call for a lotta love. A lotta compassion.

I send that out to each and every one of you.

I so appreciate the neighbors who Mr. Berger describes showing up with chain saws, ready to help cut and clear a path out for his family...

I think of the way we do that for any one we might encounter...

Peace, Love,

Melissa

Scene from top of mountain, trying to get a phone signal.. You might be able to make out the garage in the distance...

A trapped vehicle in the Berger's driveway.

Monday afternoon I cut a way along the driveway to the culvert where there was about a 30 foot stretch without any downed trees. I could hear chain saws on Horton La. and it turned out that Ben Nichols, Jediah Smith and Doug Gernhard cut a path up the hill and were cutting a way into our driveway. As evening fell, Craig Martin bushwacked over from the Fromers, because another tree had hallen across Franklin Hill Rd. He joined me in cutting a way out the driveway. The second picture is of Doug, the first appearance of someone from the outside.

Dan Ordway, a high school senior and the son of some friends brought another friend's tractor over this afternoon. We used the scoop on the front to lift logs, carry them to the end of the driveway and pile them. Dan was very good at dodging all the ends of the chopped off trees that line the driveway, the cleared path just wide enough for a car and some of the logs he was carrying were 16 feet long.

We got a lot of the trees near the barn and near the house carted away.

He is going to try to bring another tractor with forks on the bucket tomorrow so we won't have to use chains. That should greatly speed up the process.

One of four friends cutting their way in.