Telling the Bees

Listen to this Story Narrated by Emily Polk Contributor Bios Writer Emily Polk lives and writes on a small island east of San Francisco and teaches environmental writing at Stanford University. Her writing and radio documentaries have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, The Boston Globe, National Radio Project, Whole Earth Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and Aeon among others. This essay is adapted from her forthcoming book Wild Grief. Bees have long been witness to human grief, carrying messages between the living and the dead. Finding solace in the company of bees, Emily Polk opens to the widening circles of loss around her and an enduring spirit of survival. I drive under the highway overpass at 30th Street, past two women in hijabs walking swiftly, a Chinese man with his bike waiting at a bus stop, an “Exotic Market” promising cheap groceries. Boarded storefronts tagged in colorful graffiti offer a secret language of urban scars. I pass a caravan of rusted school buses and f ... Read full article.