“I’m in a really good mood because I’ve gotten to work with herbs and friends all morning,” Rosemary Thurber said a few days after Hurricane Helene swept through Warren Wilson College. Her hands were stained red-purple from processing elderberries with the Herb Crew, a sub crew of the Garden. “I’m just a farmer with all my friends, making elderberry syrup in a hurricane. As we do, right?” She laughed.
Elderberries have antiviral properties, and the syrup is one of Herb Crew’s standard herbal medicinal products. This time, they hope to distribute it to community members for free. “That’s what we try to do: make things that will heal people and help people,” Rosemary said.
Stabilizing and assessing resources has been Garden Crew’s focus since the storm. “Our crops are down the river, and our soil needs a lot of healing,” Rosemary said. “We’re in a tough spot, but we know that Garden Crew’s always been resilient — Garden Crew and this school in general.” The crew managed to save most of their tools and seedlings. They also got their solar panels working, so they can charge the solar tractors and run a refrigerator.
“The first pulse you check in an emergency is your own,” Rosemary said. “And not just your own pulse, but also the pulse of your crew and your community.”
Since the storm, Rosemary has worked not just on the Herb and Garden Crews but wherever she’s needed, preparing food on Cafeteria Crew and clearing brush and fallen trees with Landscaping Crew. “It’s such a privilege to be at a school where we already have a system where people are expected to try out lots of different kinds of work,” she said.
Warren Wilson’s experiential learning model gave Rosemary a great deal of confidence, not just in technical skills, but in how to solve problems and collaborate. “I can figure out and do things I’ve never done before. I’ve got the confidence of having pulled it off before, and knowing that when I try something new, I have so many people I can ask for help. Nobody has to be going it alone here,” she said. “Being able to rely on one another? That’s huge.”
“I don’t want to sell an image that the Warren Wilson education is somehow already built to make people super able to adapt to all this shit, because it’s crazy! No one should have to. But knowing how to rely on one another, knowing how to learn a new skill and be bad at it for a minute, and knowing that next time I sharpen a chainsaw maybe I’ll be better? Sometimes when an emergency occurs, people start thinking that there’s all these things they can’t do. ‘I can’t do my laundry right now. I can’t take a shower.’ But no, you can — you just have to do it a different way, or you have to learn some new skill,” Rosemary said. “To be in this and see a physical manifestation of how strong we are is really inspiring.”
Rosemary said the Warren Wilson community is very resilient. “The roots are deep here. I feel comfortable staying here. There’s a support system here. There’s people who I know and love and who I feel so much love from,” Rosemary said. “We have so many legendary people here. The to-do lists are really long, but the lists of heroes are so much longer.”
Rosemary also expressed gratitude for the help pouring in from outside. “It’s ridiculous to feel this level of love from so many places in the world right now. It’s ridiculous how lucky we’ve been. If you’re going to be in Buncombe County right now, this is the place to be,” she said. “No one’s having to remind each other to express gratitude these days. It’s part of breathing in and breathing out. Everywhere you look, you see someone who’s done something that made your life easier.”
What does Rosemary want people outside Western North Carolina to know? “Progress is being made, little by little. I think people are out there watching the drone footage of how horrible things are and reading about the devastation, and they need to know that those of us who still can are still trying,” she said. “This is not a school where people duck down and put their heads in the sand in an emergency. People reach out to each other, and then we help each other up.”
