We are overjoyed, overwhelmed, grateful, and beyond to share that we are returning to the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly for this year’s session. This land has held our project since 2016, and due to extensive damage from Hurricane Helene, we weren’t able to gather there last year. We are sitting in immense gratitude for the privilege to return, to drive up that mountain again, to gather on that land that holds this project so well.
Last spring during our session a group of folks went over to the Y to volunteer as they worked to reopen. A homecoming I had been avoiding since the storm. I didn’t know how to prepare myself to see another place I love so much so deeply changed. This land, and all of us as locals, have been through the hell of climate disaster in our own backyard. The grief of seeing our home and the land that has held us through so much so changed is something I still don’t have perfect words for. It was emotional to drive up the hill for the first time, to see what water and wind had erased from the landscape. But returning back with SotA family made that grief feel warm and powerful. To hold each other in witnessing felt like the radical care we work so hard to cultivate at SotA. I will never forget the feeling of that day. To be held by that land again, to go back to the untouched porch of Eureka hall, to dip our feet in the creek, to stand in the grass of a beautiful sunny hill formed from a landslide. Remembering that day feels exactly like recalling a dream.
The magic of the land is such an integral part of our gatherings, and that is more clear than ever. I know the Y is a home for so many of us in the SotA community. I know that this land and we are resilient and I can't wait to gather there again this spring 💜.
SotA 4evr,
Heidi
A landslide during Helene created a new hill in front of the lodge where we stay for our sessions each spring. It still feels like a dream to see something that wasn’t there before, a newly formed respite for us tucked behind our lodge.
