Helene scattered people’s belongings. This Raleigh artist helps return what is found
The water that rolled through Western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene was a malicious magician that swept in everything it could reach and disappeared it into the muddy flow on its way to God-Knows-Where.
Birdie Silver saw the videos, watched the fast-moving water snatch down mobile homes and stick-built houses and hundred-year-old brick stores, some with people inside, others filled with the objects that had given shape to their occupants’ lives.
So much loss, Silver thought. People are losing everything. And she wondered, what if any of it is ever found?
Compared with the loss of life – Helene took 103 people in North Carolina at last count – the things were nearly meaningless. But later, Birdie thought, when the water goes down and the mud is scraped off, what will be left of the world that washed away?
When people are trying to rebuild, she figured, the most mundane objects from before the storm might mean everything to those who lost them.
Birdie wondered how she could help, and thought: There needs to be a way for those who find storm-swept items to get them back to the people who loved and lost them.
“I realized, Oh, that could be me,” Birdie says. “And I created it right then and there.”
The Facebook page she launched, “I found your stuff ♡ WNC,” now has more than 6,000 members and is sort of a digital combination of the bulletin board at a country store, a Nancy Drew mystery and the lost-and-found closet at the end of church summer camp.
Finders come into the space respectfully carrying the objects that washed into their yards or onto their farmland, or that they picked up while cleaning up a river or creek bank. Sometimes, the item is shown just as it was found: a mud-smudged log-cabin quilt pulled from a creek, a rusted set of keys on a road near a bridge.
More often, the finder has tried to clean up the object, taking the stuffed bunny, the doll or the flowered dress home, running it through the wash and offering: If this is yours, I’ll find a way to return it.
Silver curates the posts, making sure they are kind and won’t further traumatize those who have already suffered so much. She loves that many items have been returned to their owners or claimed by relatives.
Silver says the page has become a “good-news channel,” where everyday objects are appreciated for their simple beauty and their ability to evoke memory and emotion.
“For a lot of people, finding these things without any context could be really sad,” Silver says. “But through the group, we could be the ones that figure it out and get that really meaningful thing back to the person it belongs to.
“There’s a sense of comfort,” she says. “So many people were lost to the storm. You hope this person is still around to give them this thing that you’ve found.”
