After Helene, Neighbors Needed a Place to Connect
Natalie Lamb moved to Fairview nine months before Hurricane Helene. She and her husband came from Dallas with a big, blended family—six children in all, both adopted and biological, as well as her mother. Natalie grew up in Dallas but she says, “I was searching for a place with more nature and more peace.”
When the storm came, her fourteen-year-old daughter Nev says that they were holed up in their house. “We got out a few days later, but we didn’t know what was happening,” she says. “We just thought it was, like, heavy rains. We only had a few fallen trees. Once we got down here, we were in shock because there were parts of the road falling off. One of our neighbor’s yard was totally mud. The road had water all over it.”
Her mother says, “We came down that first day very naive, not understanding the depth. Then we’d run into people and their faces were so serious and panicking.” Right on Garren Creek Road, where they live, people had died. Mudslides had carried homes down the mountain. Piles of logged trees barreled down like battering rams. Broken and covered in trees, their road was cut off from the outside.
In the days that followed, Natalie and her family were hungry. “I would say to my children, here’s a piece of bread you can eat.” Natalie put her elderly mother on a military helicopter, not even knowing where they would take her. She only knew that her mother would die without her medications.
“We also saw a lot of helpers,” Natalie says. The neighbors did everything they could for each other—cutting out trees, sharing food and equipment, unloading supplies from helicopters, shoveling mud, offering hugs.
Natalie says that she didn’t have a strong sense of community before—and not just because she was new. “We found out that people who had been out here for decades also didn’t have that.”
In this rural area, homes are spread out, without places to gather. After the storm, they knew they needed a place where they could come together—to keep supporting each other and to share joy.
Since then, the neighborhood has gained two places to connect. One is a red barn and field that is now home to a new nonprofit, the Garren Creek Foundation. The other, just down the road, is the Fairview Community Forest that opened in March, with trails for hiking and mountain biking.
Garren Creek Foundation
One week after Helene, the neighbors found themselves with a whole lot of hot dogs—a fridge full of donated hot dogs. So, they decided to throw a community dinner. They made a sign: come eat, bring your instruments.
At that first community dinner, Natalie says, “There was joy, there was community, there were kids. We were singing and eating—and it was the first time we didn’t have this feeling of dread and panic. And, we were like, ‘Well dang, that felt great.’ So, we kept doing it.”
To keep coming together, they needed a place. Some neighbors owned a red barn that they generously offered for the community to use.
Neighbors organized the nonprofit Garren Creek Foundation and Natalie now serves as executive director. At the barn, they hold dinners, jam sessions, a community garden, a farmers market, a food pantry, and free classes from yoga to disaster preparedness.
Nev—an outgoing and kind eighth grader who loves dance—will likely start leading the activities for children, when the current youth coordinator April-Skye Lee leaves for college. “They nominated me because I love little kids so much,” she says.
Nev is the oldest of four biological siblings who were adopted into the Lamb family, and the second oldest of all their children. Her family also includes three younger biological siblings that she keeps in touch with, still in Texas.
Through the foundation, Nev can offer her gift for nurturing, while other people bring their unique strengths. Someone can teach a skill, plan the garden, cook a meal, or build the website.
Since the storm, Natalie says she has met some of her best friends here.
Dan and Dawn Turner had lived on Garren Creek Road for 27 years before Helene, but they only knew a handful of their neighbors before. Now, Dawn says of the foundation,
“It’s a place of community, of gathering, of support. It’s ‘What do you need?’ It’s making sure people are clothed and have food. It’s community. It’s friendship. It’s awesome.”
Fairview Community Forest
On Nev’s fourteenth birthday in March, she came to the ribbon cutting of the Fairview Community Forest near their home, along with her mother.
Natalie says that the new trails, minutes from the barn, expand the space for their community to gather. They also create options like taking a walk or bird watching. She says, “The trail system complements the work we’re doing with Garren Creek Foundation and enhances our mission.”
Ironically, the Lambs and many other families chose to live in Fairview because they want to be in nature—but there wasn’t that much access to nature.
“There are no other public trails in Fairview,” Natalie says. “We love it here. It’s so beautiful and pleasant, but it is also really lacking in shared spaces.”
Fairview Community Forest opened to the public in March, after Conserving Carolina helped protect over 250 acres of a former summer camp. This local land trust is partnering with the nonprofit Camp Grier, which manages the forest for public access. Camp Grier also runs the WORX Project, an outdoor education program for local students on a campus that is surrounded by the community forest.
The first three miles of trails have opened to the public, and there are more to come. The plan is for an eleven-mile trail system for hiking and mountain biking. Along the trails this spring, trilliums and dwarf iris were blooming while warblers and tanagers sang in the treetops.
Natalie says, “You can see in people’s faces they’re just really excited about the prospect of having that nature to go in, right here.”
Amber Palladino with the Garren Creek Foundation says the trails also give people a reason to visit Fairview. Some visitors stop by the red barn when they see the market or a community dinner, growing the circle of connection. Everyone is welcome, she says.
The WORX Project
This summer, Nev will also get to experience the forest through the WORX Project—taking part for her third summer in a row. “WORX camp is super fun,” she says.
The WORX Project offers vocational education for local public-school students and other young people. It opens doors to career paths including jobs in WNC’s outdoor economy—and it also serves as a free summer camp, giving kids a chance to connect with nature.
Last summer, sixth graders Savannah Jefferson and Quiciyah Norman described WORX as a supportive community—where adults take an interest in them and teens accept one another.
Savannah said, “Everybody tries to include everyone, no matter what. Everyone cares about your opinion and what you think about a certain topic.”
Quiciyah added, “I would say I haven’t gotten judged here. People can just be themselves and not worry about what people say about them and just have fun.”
This summer, students at the WORX Project will have a new asset—an expanding trail system in the protected forest. Students will use the trails for hiking, birding, and plant i.d.—and these activities may later include mountain biking, trail building and maintenance, and forestry.
Related: School in the Woods. Discover the WORX Project!
Sara Jarrell, director of the WORX Project, says, “The Fairview Community Forest will give our students something you just can’t replicate in a classroom—a living, breathing space to learn, work, and grow. Students will have opportunities to engage in conservation work, develop job skills, and build a deeper connection to their environment. It’s not just about education—it’s about confidence, purpose, and seeing themselves as capable contributors to their community.”
For Nev, the trails are a place she can experience as a neighbor as well as a student at WORX.
She says, “The trails add another way to not only get exercise but also see more nature, like all these plants and animals out there that we didn’t know existed. And it just adds a fun place to go instead of driving thirty minutes to experience nature.”
