Listen as the pages of the magazine come to life in the Storytellers podcast showcasing the voices of Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their column aloud, allowing each distinct voice to shine. Click below to listen to Editor in Chief Elizabeth Hudson read her column aloud. 

There was a stretch of days when the phones didn’t ring and the messages didn’t come and the usual rhythm of our work — the ping of a writer checking in from the mountains, a call from a photographer on the road, the steady word from our distribution center in Asheville’s River Arts District — simply stopped.

So we waited. And waited.

We refreshed our inboxes again and again. We stared at weather reports and outage charts and road-closure alerts. In Greensboro, at the ramp to Interstate 40, a sign flashed in orange lights a message that seemed beyond belief: “All Roads to Western NC Closed.”

In that long, uneasy silence, my mind traveled west. To Brevard and Boone. To Bryson City and Burnsville. To Asheville and Ashe County. To the Flowering Bridge in Lake Lure, where, for years, volunteers bent over beds of succulents and roses and even the little garden just for dogs. To the 500 steps at Chimney Rock State Park, each riser carrying you closer to the long view, to that wide-open gorge below. To the great house at Biltmore, its windows forever gazing toward Mount Pisgah, gently rolling in the distance.

These places have been part of the story of this magazine for decades. They’re part of the story of North Carolina. And suddenly, all at once, we could not reach them.

For 25 years, our October issue has celebrated the splendor of autumn in the mountains. We photograph it a year ahead, chasing maples flaring red, oaks blazing gold, ridges glowing orange in the low, autumn light. But last fall, after Hurricane Helene tore through and left so much wreckage behind, we found no easy views to frame.

Roads washed away. Overlooks closed. Towns lay under mud. In some places, the only light came from generators, their glare sharp and white against a dark sky. Families grieved losses too great to measure, too deep for words. It was a season of heartbreak, felt across the state.

And then, in the midst of it, a writer in Fairview sent us a photograph: a rainbow, lifting itself over the mountains.

It wasn’t the picture we expected to begin this year’s issue with, but it’s the image that stayed with us. A fragile band of color, soft and certain, bent across the sky, saying what words could not: that beauty persists. Even now. Even after.

The rainbow didn’t erase the sorrow. But it was something. Hope, breaking through the clouds in streaks of red and gold and green.

And for us, it was enough. Enough to remind us why we keep turning west. Why we keep telling these stories. Why we hold tight to the promise that color will return.

Elizabeth Hudson
Editor in Chief