Lauren Bacchus is one of many people in Asheville who are strangely enamored with the city’s sinkholes.
She’s a member of the Asheville Sinkhole Group, an online watering hole of more than 3,400 people in and around this North Carolina city who eagerly discuss the chasms that mysteriously emerge from time to time. She even owns a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “For the love of all things holey.” Bacchus concedes sinkholes are an odd thing to be passionate about, but they speak to the impermanence of things made by human hands.
“I don’t want to discredit that sinkholes can cause a lot of damage and hurt people, but they do evoke this feeling of excitement and curiosity and mystery,” she said. “It’s a void that opens up where you thought something was solid. That’s the reality of the ground we walk on all the time.”
The Facebook group recently enjoyed renewed interest when a small pit appeared at an intersection near a storm-damaged area on the outskirts of town late last month. “Oh... Read more
