AURORA — The Fossil Museum is open again.

There seem to be fewer tarps on roofs.

Perhaps hundreds of trees have been cleared off lawns.

Roughly four months after Hurricane Irene left devastation behind, Aurora and surrounding communities are slowly recovering.

The storm severely damaged numerous structures in southeast Beaufort County, washing away homes in the Hickory Point, South Creek and Jarvis Landing communities and displacing dozens of residents.

Today, an unknown number of residents have returned to their homes in Aurora proper, according to town officials and volunteers.

Some mobile, temporary housing units, put in place by contractors engaged by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, still are on hand in and around town.

As of last week, 51 FEMA units remained in place countywide, said Jim Chrisman, assistant county manager and finance officer.

A huge pile of vegetative debris, deposited by state contractors on county-owned property in town, has been winnowed down to a stacked series of stumps. A few of those stumps were being split and removed Wednesday afternoon, another sign of a gradual return to normal life in the long wake of Irene.

“I think that it’s going better,” Bonnie Jones said of the recovery.

Jones is a Methodist volunteer who has worked with her husband, Aurora town Commissioner George Jones, on meeting post-storm needs through the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

“I think probably we’re getting back to normal, but we’ll never be normal in some areas,” Bonnie Jones said.

The Aurora branch of the Beaufort-Hyde-Martin Regional Library has reopened since Irene rolled an estimated 4 feet — perhaps more — of storm surge onto the town’s Main Street.

Library staff has relocated to a building by Dollar General, Jones related.

Overall, “I think we’re doing well,” she said, adding homes are being rebuilt and repaired, and that a handful of townspeople banded together to buy Christmas presents and decorations for storm victims.

The Fossil Museum is keeping regular hours, and one of its buildings, flooded during the storm, has been refurbished, shared Andrea Stilley, the museum’s director.

“We’ve got everything fixed, and we are back,” Stilley said.

This last statement applied to the museum, she made clear.

“I know a lot of folks are still dealing with insurance companies,” said Town Clerk Judi Lannon.

Some of the town’s elderly population went to live with their children when their homes became unlivable, Lannon indicated.

In nearby Hickory Point, northeast of town, the recovery news is mixed. A two–lane dirt road cutting across low-lying PotashCorp land leads to Hickory Point and neighboring Sandy Landing — the only access residents now have to their homes. Construction on the N.C. Highway 306 bridge, washed out in the storm, is not expected to be completed until late February.

Tim Matthews and his family live on the point on a full-time basis, not far from a lot where a home was pushed off its foundation. Across the road, the wind-driven tide shoved a mobile home into some trees. The home is still there, its door bashed in, its curtains flapping in the breeze through broken windows.

Not far away, a FEMA trailer rests in a front yard.

“We’re glad to be back,” said Matthews, flanked by a panoramic view of the Pamlico River and Pamlico Sound.

Other immediate neighbors, a fair amount of them weekenders and others full-timers, haven’t been able to return.

“It’s just very slow. It’s a long process,” Matthews said.

He praised The Salvation Army and the American Red Cross for their assistance in the difficult days after Irene.

“They fed us,” he said, adding that he and his family had only been able to return home a few weeks ago.

As for rebuilding, “I think the biggest thing is how people are going to get funding” from FEMA and insurance companies, he said. Matthews, who rented housing in nearby Edward for several months while the entire first floor of his home was rebuilt, termed that work “probably the hardest part of the whole process.”

Despite the magnitude of the storm, there appeared to have been little doubt Matthews and his family would return to Hickory Point, a normally peaceful place.

Complimented on a magnetic view that could be called spectacular, he said, “It is now.”