{"id":37661,"date":"2025-11-05T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T08:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/?p=37661"},"modified":"2025-10-20T13:44:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T20:44:57","slug":"the-ladies-of-lodore-lessons-in-healing-and-going-with-the-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2025\/11\/05\/the-ladies-of-lodore-lessons-in-healing-and-going-with-the-flow\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ladies of Lodore: Lessons in Healing and Going with the Flow"},"content":{"rendered":"

An impulsive \u201cyes\u201d flew me into Grand Junction for a free rafting trip down the Gates of Lodore with a group of women veterans whom I had never met. Anyone who has done an overnight trip like this knows that the group dynamic is crucial to the emotional and physical success of such a trip. Going with strangers was a gamble, but it was a crapshoot I was willing to take.<\/p>\n

I was coming up out of the muck and horrors of Hurricane Helene, when the creeks and rivers of Western North Carolina swelled to unfathomable levels, surging, sweeping and swallowing everything that had been carefully planted over a hundred years. My newly-built alternative therapy retreat center hadn\u2019t even held its first class when the North Toe River rose from 1,000 CFS to 163,000 CFS. Only chunks of two concrete posts remained in the decimated and rocky bank. Once a quarter mile of lush grasses with ancient oaks and sycamores\u2014all gone. My neighbors\u2019 houses, gone. One neighbor is still missing, his house washed away and splintered into pieces with him in it.<\/p>\n