This past week I had the distinct privilege of visiting Silver City, New Mexico at the invitation of my bee friend Susan Clair, the force of nature behind our two year beekeeping certification program here in Duke City.  She has moved down south and now is working her magic to organize a Bee City in southern New Mexico. I have no doubt she and her club will be successful. This would be Bee City #2 here in New Mexico!

One thing I noticed everywhere in Silver City, were native pollinator gardens. Come to find out, they have a very active master gardener club that has taken over public spaces to make them beautiful as well as important habitat for pollinators.

I learned recently about the million pollinator garden challenge. Wouldn’t it be absolutely brilliantly amazing if communities all across this country took this challenge on? It begins home by home—in your backyard!

The main reason reason I wandered down to Silver City, was to give the Bee City USA presentation and share our experience of becoming a Bee City USA here in Burque. I found Silver City to be an eclectic group of people carving out a living or retirement—depending on which edge of the age spectrum you reside—but certainly not sitting around and letting moss gather underfoot. I met small business owners and many well educated retirees finding the warmer climate and culture very amenable. Those recent transplants who had retired to Silver City were busy re-tooling for new enterprises —bringing a wonderful vitality and rich life experience to the community. The food was great, hospitality huge and passion for pollinators pleasantly surprising. It is a perfect storm for creating a Bee City!

As I flew home on the single prop, tiny 10 seater plane called Boutique Air (who knew… They fly daily out of Albuquerque?!) I waxed poetic flying over the landscape. Having never flown over the Gila Wilderness and southern New Mexico before in such an intimate way, I was mesmerized.

Skies as wide as a New Mexico smile, the land unrolling like a human body. Rock shelves and mesas like high cheek bones….the bridge of a nose or a bony sacrum. Ruffled river beds like flowing Rapunzel locks and receding hairlines. Rivulets of zigzagging arroyos like birth scars or varicose veins. The color of rock like so many human skin tones. The Gobi desert colliding with a Kenyan Savannah.

The vast Gila with majestic curves heaped up into hillocks and mountains, dotted with Ponderosa pine forests or scraggly, scrubby beard.

I was reminded of how precious is this planet and how worthy of loving and preserving to the best of our ability.

Thank you Silver City Beeks…for everything.

I’m rooting for you!