If one did not read last year’s headlines, didn’t watch the CNN newcasts, wasn’t familiar at all with Peeks Creek and the debris slide caused by Hurricane Ivan that killed five and completely destroyed the mountain community last September, one might never know of the tragedy at all from visiting the community.

Today, Peeks Creek is peaceful. The sheriff’s deputy stationed at the bottom of the road to deter gawkers and over zealous media is gone. The debris has been cleared and grass grows where the foundations of homes once stood. The earth no longer smells overturned and rotting.

The streambed looks different though. It is distinctively un-Western North Carolina — at least, that is, until the floods changed what Western North Carolina looks like. It is too rocky, with boulders the size of cars creating new gullies for the small stream to flow through.

And there are still eerie markers, reminders of where homes used to be — a stray carport, a bridge to nowhere, a basketball goal, and a tree house — that were neither destroyed by the slide nor torn down in the clean up.

“I don’t go. I don’t go back, it’s very depressing,” said Marilyn Jones, whose home was one of those taken by the slide.

A year later she and her husband are still living in a rented house.

“I’ve picked up the mail at the post office for a year,” Jones said, explaining how it’s easier than filing a forwarding order or change of address.

The couple also is still looking for money to recover what they lost. No insurance policy covers landslides, so they, along with other Peeks Creek homeowners, have filed suit against their insurance companies.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has given them a total of $10,800, which is $10,000 more than Jones had received when she appeared before the state’s Joint Select Committee on Hurricane Relief in December 2004 to tell her story.

Rep. Phil Haire, D-Sylva, also tapped Jones to come before the state legislature to lobby for assistance and bring a human face to the tragedy, which may have helped sway legislators to increase their funding to meet the more than $350 million in unmet needs.

Jones’ appeals softened hearts not with impassioned grit and podium pounding, but with gently spoken honesty. At the Joint Select Committee on Hurricane Relief meeting, her voice cracked with emotion and nerves as she pointed to before and after photos of Peeks Creek.

“I’m not a public speaker,” she said. “I’m very quiet, so to step forward and do this has been very hard. But I feel like it was something I had to do.”

Jones was raised in Peeks Creek and had her own home there for 30 years. Her son lives about a quarter mile down the road. The night of the storm, Jones and her husband sought shelter with family higher up and to the right of the creekbed. As the storm worsened, Jones called her son to warn him.

“I said, ‘don’t come up here, don’t come.’ Then the power went out and the phone went dead,” Jones said.

Jones stepped out onto the porch and screamed her son’s name into the wind. It wasn’t until 4 a.m. when emergency crews on the scene were finally able to tell her that her son had gotten out, was OK. They didn’t know where he was, but he was OK.

The slide bypassed Jones’ son’s house, but picked up the house across the creek and emptied out its contents like a child dumping out a bucket of toys. His yard became the staging ground for emergency operations, and later community meetings where county, state and federal officials stood and swore to residents they were doing everything they could do.

These days, the issue is finding closure. While Jones has been able to move forward, she has not been able to move on.

The state funds for buying out Peeks Creek homes have been allocated to the county government to the tune of approximately $2.4 million, said Macon County Emergency Services Director Warren Cabe. But before Peeks Creek residents may receive their allotment, they must first meet with appraisers, go over photos, and try to determine what their possessions were worth.

“I would just like to get fair market value and move on,” Jones said.

She and her husband do not plan to rebuild in Peeks Creek, but haven’t been able to make plans beyond that either. They were approved for a Small Business Association loan, but borrowing more money, essentially taking on another mortgage, isn’t the solution they were looking for.

“That’s going back 30 years, so that’s not the route you want to go unless you absolutely have to,” Jones said.

The trick now is holding out.

“We’ve tried to be patient,” Jones said.