Filing off our Edges

"From this ridge, I can see that below and in the distance is a landscape licked by fire and swaths of trees dying from too little sun.

"For example, ecosystems expand from their borders, where they tend to host a greater diversity of life." - Joan Halifax

Ecologists call it an ecotone: the transitional zone where two different ecosystems meet. The border between forest and meadow. The place where saltwater and freshwater mix. The margin where grassland gives way to scrub, then to forest.

These edges are unusually productive places. They hold species native to each bordering ecosystem, plus species that exist only in the transition zone itself. More niches, more variety, more life. But the deeper reason is gradient. Temperature, moisture, light, soil chemistry all shift steeply across a short distance. Where conditions are in flux, the system runs "hotter", complexity builds, and open niches multiply. This is where nature's creativity is fully alive, creating species level solutions to challenges. Stability, it turns out, is not the most fertile condition. The border is.

There's a reason ecologists also note that ecosystems expand from their edges, not their interiors. The interior is already spoken for. The edge is where the negotiation is still happening, where what-was meets what's-coming, and something new gets a foothold.

What's true of the outer world applies to our inner landscapes too. Intellectual and spiritual growth happen, not by sticking with what you know, but by seeking, and experiencing, and learning. A single well-timed moment far outside the comfort zone can bring a spiritual flourising.

It's been well over a decade since I slipped off my shoes on a moonlit night, a sea of glowing embers stretching ahead, flames still licking the edges of the raked path, and let the flesh of my feet meet the fire. I later became a certified firewalk instructor and have walked over many fires with my students, but that first time brought me out of the middle of my mental ecosystem and into the ecotone between me and the flames.

Every previous experience where my skin edged too close to the fire ended predictably with pain. My heart thundered and my mind screamed to do the sensible thing: put my shoes back on and high-tail it out of there. But what if I really could walk across that bed of coals and not burn. I was the first to try, because I did not want to surrender my edge by watching another go across and see it work. I sought that edge, my own ecotone.

Over I went.

And I didn't burn. I became obsessed enough to stay at that skin/fire ecotone long enought to become a certified firewalk instructor. Somehwere in my unconscious, new species of possible selves sprouted. One of them was 'author'. Something I'd never set out to be or thought possible. I know that the traits seeded by approaching that fiery edge gifted me the skill of gathering my fear and feasting on it, using it as fuel to get across to the other side whether that was hot coals or a finished novel.

In our algorithmically fed modern world where we seek to be constantly reinforced and any discomfort or struggle removed (for a price) aren't we becoming vast deserts. Low-energy, low-possibility ecosystems flattened by never having to deal with the friction at the edges because they've been filed off. Less creative. Less alive. Less able to find creative solutions to our problems.

I much prefer ecotones, both in my choice of a hiking destination and in my inner life where I constantly seek my edge and love what strange ideas evolve.