Gentle Flow, Biblical Water with Dr. Lisa Raleigh

Welcome to Provocative Conversations from Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host James Navé. In this episode, I sit down with Lisa Raleigh, Executive Director of RiverLink in Asheville—and one of the twelve speakers taking the TEDxAsheville stage on March 20, 2026 at the Diana Wortham Theater, under the theme Messy. Lisa was on site in Black Mountain when Hurricane Helene hit, and she helps us understand what “flow” really means: the gentle Swannanoa and French Broad we float on in summer, and the same rivers turning biblical when rain, terrain, and history collide. We talk watershed scale, precursor rains, and why a two-foot river can become twenty-three feet deep. We also talk about what humans do to riverbanks—what happens when riparian buffers are stripped away, and why places that kept them, like parts of the Biltmore frontage, fared differently. From Chimney Rock and Lake Lure to Marshall and the River Arts District, Lisa makes the case for calculated risk, shared responsibility, and floodplain realism—without denial and without despair. I close with a personal river memory from Brevard Road, a grandfather smoking Tampa cigars, and the old foam-dark French Broad—then pivot to Manila, where waterways still carry the cost of city life. Rivers remember. The question is: will we?