Question: Where do you think Georgia is as far as being an environmentally proactive entity? What kind of progress do you see in the state of Georgia as a whole?

Answer: Ray uses the growing movement toward organic agriculture and the resulting growing attendance at the Georgia Organics conference as an example of Georgia’s progress. When she spoke at the conference four years ago, the conference had its greatest attendance yet with 240 people, she said. This year, more than 1,100 people attended the conference.

"We’re talking about exponential interest in a life that makes sense, a life that treats the land, our communities, our farmers, our ecosystems with respect. So it is coming to Georgia. I’m not sure it’s been driven by the old guard. I think it’s been driven by people ... with ideas who want to see a different South, who want to see a different Georgia. I wish that was represented in our legislature ... it’s going to take us changing the face of politics in Georgia."

Q: And on the other side of that coin, do you think there has been any recent backpedaling as far as legislation?

A: "We gave an electric utility the ability to charge us now for nuclear energy to be built for the future, and we did that this legislature. I totally question nuclear energy. There is no way we have to store it. I live five miles from a nuclear plant and the spent nuclear fuel is stored in concrete casks. If you’ve been under any bridge, you know concrete doesn’t last, and we’re talking about a substance ... a hazardous fatal material that will be around another 4.5 billion years. But that’s just one example."

Q: How can returning to a local economy and supporting things like locally grown food be beneficial for the Earth?

A: Ray begins by describing how a global economy is bad for the Earth. She gives an example of buying a $13.99 T-shirt from Target, and says there is no way that $13.99 paid for a farmer to grow the cotton, then the cotton to be shipped overseas to be produced by a seamstress and to the United States for sale — not to mention the cost of the pollution caused in the process.

"Buying local food means that you aren’t paying the fossil fuels for transporting our food great distances and it means that you and your community are taking responsibility for the chemical input into the farm. If the farm is a point-source polluter because of overuse of nitrogen or phosphates, then the damage is done in your community and you’re more apt to figure out a solution to it. If it’s done in California, where most of our produce comes from, it’s most unlikely you’re going to even know about it."

Q: You have mentioned making Earth Day an every day event. How difficult of a feat do you think that is?

A: Ray says no matter the level of difficulty, environmental crises are forcing people to reconsider their relationship with the Earth.

"I think for some people it’s going to be harder than for other people. Some people are more prepared than others. You know, some of us have put a lot of faith in an industrial society and ultimately, I’m not sure that it’s going to sustain us. In fact, I’m kind of sure it’s not going to sustain us."

Q: Some of your book "Wild Card Quilt" focuses on the differences between your and your father’s religious ideologies. And in "Ecology of A Cracker Childhood" you dedicate a whole chapter to God’s view of clear-cutting a forest.

What role do you think religion plays or can play in environmental stewardship?

A: "What really helped end slavery was when the churches got behind it, and I think it’s absolutely imperative that people of faith start taking responsibility for protection and stewardship of God’s creation. This is God’s work and we are destroying it relentlessly."

Q: You said in "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" that we come from a legacy of ruination. What do you think our destiny is?

A: "I hope, I put a lot of faith and hope that we are going to turn this big ship around. I hope that’s our future. That’s all I’m going to say. I struggle with pessimism about it, but my job is to go around telling people there is hope. So that means in our future is wholeness. It’s the opposite of ruination. In our future are grand projects that return humans to community and to the land, the preservation of big tracts of wildness, the infrastructure that creates and nurtures community."

Q: What made you decide you wanted to use your writing talent to call attention to environmental issues?

A: Ray said she realized her purpose while living in Colombia. In the South American country to teach English, Ray said she was walking down a road in the Andes Mountains and decided that she needed to merge her two great loves — writing and nature.

"I think it was because I felt like I was being divided in two and I knew then that I could do both at the same time," she said.

When Ray returned to the United States, she began volunteering at the Florida Wildlife Magazine and later pursued a master’s degree in nature writing.

"As a child, I knew I wanted to write, but it took me being an adult realizing that my love of nature needed my work. I needed to be a voice for the southern landscape."

Q: At what point in your life did you look around and realize that the Earth needed help — and more specifically your help?

A: "It wasn’t that my grandfather took me out in the woods — I think it was maybe being raised on a junk yard showed me somehow what I didn’t have so I became the antithesis of what I was as a child. It wasn’t until I was at school in North Georgia College that I saw an activist. There was a tree slated to be cut, and one morning, walking to class, I saw in the middle of the night somebody had put up a sign ‘Woodman, Woodman spare this tree’ and that was the first-ever display of activism. Before that nature had been a given, something you take for granted ... it had been scenery, and suddenly I realized that nature was at risk. So the more I became educated about what the environment is supposed to look like, the more I realized what we’ve destroyed. And that continues to this day."

Q: You spend a goodly portion of "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" describing your father’s dedication to animal welfare, but you also say your father was not an overt lover of nature — in fact, you talk about how he developed a fear of it.

But there is a scene in which you describe how your father stepped on a toad and attempted to repair its exploded belly. The effort was in vain, but the effect is a vomit-inducing illumination of the heart your father had for other animals.

What role do you think your father played in your passion for preserving and restoring South Georgia’s ecological system?

A: "I never put that together before, but maybe you’re right that that’s where it came from, from my dad and his big heart. But I never put it together before.

"If life were left up to my dad things would remain the same. Change is not a friend of my dad, and also I think because of his faith he reveres life and life in all forms, but especially human life. My dad would be a formidable foe if he saw you hurting human life and also, as I showed in the book, animal life."