Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2014 - 10

E

from the
editor

kurt rheinheimer

Farewell to our 'Heart and Soul'
in case you missed it a page or so back: the most admired and
cherished part of this magazine for many readers says
goodbye with this issue.
leave it to the conscientious,
painstaking, precise Elizabeth Hunter
to convey to me her decision to retire
from this magazine's most popular
part - the "From the Farm" columns
that have graced our pages since
1992 - in the form of a kind of a
column of its own.
Amid about 1,400 words of the
carefully wrought, insightful writing
that has won her a wagon-full of
international awards and a region-full
of devoted fans were these two
sentences, following the assertion
that she felt she'd reached the point
of plowing the same ground again
and again:
"[W]hat I'm writing now is
variations on the same themes I've
always written about: living close to
the earth and close to the bone,
about community and finding one's
place. For readers looking for that
sort of thing from me, the archive
exists and is of sufficient size."
My first reaction was to try to use
some of Elizabeth's pervasive and
inspiring wonder at the natural world
to protest: The wildflowers bloom
anew every spring, Elizabeth, but to
no less of a sense of joy for those, like
you, who appreciate them most.
But in the end - in the beginning,
actually - I did not try to change the
mind of a person I admire as much as
anyone, of a person I count as a
friend. For who, if not Elizabeth
Hunter, would not think and re-think,
would not inspect and reconsider
from every perspective before she
sat down and wrote that 1,400word letter of resignation?
I know of no one.
Which does not lessen the blow
of the loss of the work of the writer
who has been referred to by our
publisher Richard Wells as "the heart

10 | BlueRidgeCountry.com

and soul of Blue Ridge
Country magazine."
There are tiny solaces:
Elizabeth has agreed to
continue her long-running
"Mountain Garden" columns
until a replacement
gardening writer can be
found. And I will have a
softer eye toward the
occasional personal essay
from writers whom I've told
over the years that the
philosophical, insightful,
conscience-of-the-mountains
niche is completely filled
here, with the columnist we
are so very lucky to have.
Tiny tiny solaces, to be
sure. The larger one is that
the person who contributed
those columns is, as always,
living their spirit by looking
around her, thinking about
things and moving on to
what she thinks is best. You
communicate regularly with
Elizabeth for more than a
quarter century - her piece in
Blue Ridge Country Volume I,
Elizabeth Hunter in 1999, at the butterfly garden
Number 1 (June/July 1988)
she and friend Judy Carson built at Blue Ridge
was a loving portrait of the
Parkway MP 328.3.
Barrow family of Banner Elk -
And one more thing: Thank you,
and you have no doubt in the
Elizabeth Hunter, for 137 exquisite
knowledge that what she has chosen
columns.
is, indeed, just one more deeply and
But then, as they say, who's
thoroughly considered step in
counting? 
"finding one's place."

there are tiny solaces: elizabeth has agreed
to continue her long-running "mountain
garden" columns until a replacement
gardening writer can be found.
http://www.BlueRidgeCountry.com
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2014

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