Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2014 - 9

Iraq; from West Africa, where the
Ebola virus was grimly reaping. I'd
heard people hurling words like spears
at those they hated and feared. On an
over-crowded planet, where too few
have way too much and way too many
have far too little, I hadn't quite
realized how much I needed an
exchange about shoring things up
instead of tearing things apart.
The couple disappeared before I
had time to confess how appalled I'd
been, a couple of weeks earlier, to
learn that for years, without realizing
it, I'd been systematically destroying
the nests of solitary bees and wasps.
In an interview I'd heard on public
radio, an expert on native pollinators
said he grew raspberries in his back
yard, not for the fruit so much as to
provide nesting habitat for solitary
bees and wasps. They drill holes in
the pruned ends of old canes to build
their nests, he explained. Cutting out
spent canes every year, I'd noticed
those holes. I'd been particularly
careful to break those canes up
before taking them to the compost
pile. I'd assumed the holes were
evidence of something attacking the
raspberries. Assumed without
bothering to find out - and in so
doing, killed off the tiny nesting
wasps and bees I so enjoy watching in
summer as they hover above the
minute blooms on my fennel, catmint
and thyme. I'd known they were
beneficial, as pollinators, predators
and parasitizers of garden pests. It
never occurred to me to wonder
where they lived.
Now I know where some of them
do. Cleaning the raspberry patch will
take longer from now on. If I expect
the wild world to nourish my body
and spirit, I'm going to have to learn
a lot more. The consequences of
ignorance are not bliss.
All afternoon, I've been writing to

Cleaning the raspberry patch will take
longer from now on. If I expect the wild
world to nourish my body and spirit, I'm
going to have to learn a lot more.
the buzz of a small bumblebee just
outside my window. It's methodically
working the jewelweed, pushing its
plush body into first one flower then
another. These last few days have
been hot and humid, but the buckeye
leaves are the color of rust; a blizzard
of them blew across the yard a few
days ago, in the wind before a storm.
My last monarch eggs have hatched;
chrysalises are accumulating at the
top of the cages. The part of the earth
the bumblebee and I inhabit is tilting
away from the sun.
More than 20 years ago, I was
offered an expensive piece of real
estate in this magazine, a two-page
spread upon which to have my say, on
any topic and in whatever words I
chose. I don't think I understood quite
what a privilege that was until back at
the beginning of the summer, when a
friend and I met in Asheville for lunch.
This was around the time that an
unhappy young Californian climbed
into his black BMW to cruise the
streets. He shot and killed a half
dozen people he didn't know, and
then himself. Before he started the
car, he posted a 140-page manifesto
on line in which he set forth his
complaint with the world. Lots of
people read it, or part of it, because
he killed those people. If he hadn't,
would anyone have bothered?
Probably not.
One of the things my friend told
me was how much she was enjoying
Facebook; she'd renewed

acquaintance with high school
friends and with students she'd long
ago taught. She was somewhat
surprised that I hadn't established an
online presence. Why not?
"Because I'm already out there," I
said. Out there, thanks to this column.
Even before that though, before
Elliott Rodger's anger and pain drove
him to kill in order to be recognized
and heard, I'd been thinking the time
was coming for me to cede my space
in Blue Ridge Country to someone
else. Time for me to get off the stage.
I'm extraordinarily grateful to
longtime publisher Richard Wells and
to Kurt Rheinheimer, my longtime
editor, for giving me this chance.
What unbelievable luck, Kurt writing
me back in the days when we still
used typewriters and communicated
by snail mail, to invite me to take over
this column when its original author
moved away from the Blue Ridge.
What incredible luck.
I'm grateful to each of you who
has taken the time to read what I've
had to say. No writer could ask for
more. Thanks to those of you who
wrote to me when a column moved
you; to those who stopped me in the
grocery store parking lot or at the
bank to tell me how much you liked a
column you'd just read. I've loved
every bit of the time I've spent,
thinking about what to write, and
then, through the writing and
rewriting, discovering exactly how I
felt and what I wanted to say. Thanks
for listening - and all the best. 
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 | 9
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2014

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