Displaced by Hurricane Helene: A River Guide's Pivot to Ecuador

When Are You Coming Home? You Asked?

It is the most common question I get from folks who have followed my journey over the years: When are you coming home?

The truth is, the answer isn't a date on a calendar. To answer it, we have to look at what happened to my home, and what it actually costs to exist in the United States right now.

My life changed drastically in September 2024 when Hurricane Helene washed away my home in the Green River Cove. Losing my base of operations was a heavy hit, but the real exhaustion came from the system that followed. For over a year and a half, I encountered nothing but resistance in my efforts to rebuild.

The final straw was the state's Renew NC recovery program. I had to put up a massive, five-figure deposit upfront just to see the fine print of the contract. I want to be clear: the staff and workers at Renew NC were absolutely wonderful, and with time and patience, I was eventually able to recover those funds. The issue wasn't the people on the ground; it was the bureaucratic rules they were bound by. What I read in that contract was an absolute trap. Following the flood, major insurance providers fled the area, yet the state required me to carry mandatory, astronomical insurance policies that would have consumed a staggering percentage of my fixed income. It is exactly the kind of financial snare you expect when disaster recovery laws are influenced by corporate lobbyists rather than the needs of the working class.

Worse, if that insurance lapsed for even a single day, I would face judgments exceeding my financial resources, meaning I would lose my property entirely. With inflation and rising premiums, my fixed income would only be able to keep up for a few years at most. Signing that contract was financial suicide. I walked away. You don't survive bureaucracy by signing away your independence.

Before the flood, I lived a very frugal, self-sufficient life. But being displaced in the United States today forces a harsh reality: the math no longer works.

My true community has always existed within dual elements: the deep attachment I have to the Green River and her surrounding game lands, alongside the years I spent guiding on the Ocoee River in East Tennessee. But without my base of operations in North Carolina, the traditional seasonal migration between the two is simply broken.

I tried to force it during the summer of 2025, and it was a logistical disaster. When the house washed away, so did my kitchen appliances and my quality camping gear. Without a home base or the ability to prep-cook meals, the daily cost of living skyrocketed. I ended up losing money over the course of the season, and I ate rather poorly just trying to survive the logistics of being displaced.

The Green and the Ocoee will always be my home in spirit, but the old way of doing things is gone. Traveling overland through South America isn't an extended vacation; it is a calculated pivot.

I currently live off a modest retirement pension from my previous career. In the US, that fixed income is squeezed tighter every day. In Ecuador, it is enough to qualify for residency, eat well, and maintain a high quality of life without going into debt.

I am not abandoning my roots. I am keeping my land in the Green River Cove and will continue to maintain it.

When you are forced to flee to higher ground at two in the morning and watch everything you own wash away by dawn, your definition of "home" is forced to evolve. Nearly a week after the flood, during our first conversation, my mother told me that Pachamama was prodding me with the lesson of impermanence to move forward.

She was right. I realized that a home isn't strictly a physical structure, a ZIP code, or a piece of property; even though the Green River Cove will always be sacred to me.

For decades, my real community has been defined by dual elements. Home has always been the game lands of the Green River, the current of the Ocoee, the people I paddle with, and the freedom to move independently. I am carrying that with me into South America. My home is now Kay Pacha, this earthly realm, the physical world of the here and now.

So, when people ask me when I am coming back, the truest answer I can give is simply this: I am home.

I am not wandering aimlessly. I am just making the most of the options available to me and navigating a new, necessary stretch of water. I'll see you on the river.