FEMA Folks and Us.

Last week, when the FEMA folks make their initial appearance in our town office, I step out and chat with a woman from Georgia. I intend to skip the meeting that’s about to transpire, but I’m interested to hear what these people are seeing around my state and how this whole FEMA thing works anyway. My new acquaintance tells me immediately that she’s exhausted. They’ve visited multiple towns, driving through rural Vermont.

She’s quite concerned about the impending cold, and I assure her that snow is (probably) not going to appear in October, almost certainly not accumulate. The FEMA folks are apparently working on the state’s natural deadline, putting as much of the state back together before the snow sets in.

By the time she heads up to the meeting about the FEMA portal and so much talk about culverts and more culverts, we’ve swapped stories about working and parenting and she’s shared her love of Atlanta.

On her way out, she leans in my door and says goodbye. It’s a moment: the handful of Vermonters and a few FEMA people — politeness all around — brought together by enormously complex events. A selectboard member says, We’re hoping for a nice fall so you can see Vermont at its best…

Last evening, I’m talking to my parents on the phone, standing on my porch and leaning against my house’s corner board, looking across the little valley that holds the town where I live, when I realize the world around me is pink. The light isn’t the streaming crimson of sunset. A soft pinkness suffuses our world: sky, valley, village, right down to my bare toes. September that feels like August, but is still definitely September. That’s where we are.