ARDEN, North Carolina — After more than a week without rain, heavy showers on Tuesday were welcome news to gardeners in the mountains of western North Carolina, where dogwoods are in bloom and all but the latest trees are putting on leaves. But Richard Sanders wasn’t cheering.
Sanders, principal forester with Wildwood Consulting in Asheville, can’t move fast enough to clear the countless downed trees still lying in the woods around Asheville, pummeled by Hurricane Helene last September. Rain means mud, and logging crews can’t operate heavy machinery for long in such conditions.
“We’re kind of working against the clock,” Sanders said as he stepped over branches and trunks from collapsed white pine trees on a worksite in a steady rain. “There’s a shelf life to these trees on the ground.”
Seven months after the remnants of the hurricane unleashed high winds, mudslides and historic flooding, the region is only beginning to grapple with the challenges of removing trees from entire sections of forest, mostly on privately owned land, and finding a purpose for them.
