Since they were children, Leslie High and Laurie Lilliott embraced the natural beauty of Dekle Beach, a small town along Florida’s verdant Big Bend coast, where Helene did some of its worst damage.
The storm leveled residences and felled trees, but after nearly hitting Dekle Beach dead on — the National Weather Service said it made landfall just to the north, near Perry — the storm’s 140 mph winds couldn’t take out the town’s human bonds.
High grew up in the enclave; Lilliott was a frequent visitor with vacationing family and still comes regularly, she said. The population of Taylor County, which underlies Dekle Beach, is nearly 22,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“I’m born and raised,” High said. “You got the salt in your shoes, and you don’t get it out.”
Lilliott added, “It doesn’t come out ever. It’s kind of like the salt of the earth.”
Video of the devastation shows the rubble of flattened homes floating in floodwater. The town’s natural swamplands appear to have been subsumed by the storm’s torrential rain, covering much of the terrain in shallow, standing water.
Lilliott said the devastation won’t stop her from returning.
“I just love it,” she said. “It was good, good times, good memories. I would move here. Regardless.”
Nearby today, a man in a work-duty pickup and another coordinated to move a felled tree from a road that leads to Dekle Beach.
High said it’s not just the coastal environment the makes Dekle Beach special. “It’s the people,” she said.