What’s your ecotone?

All of us at Ecotone are dedicated to reimagining place. As the magazine’s tenth-anniversary year began, we asked you, our community, about your ecotones—where you call home, what your favorite piece from Ecotone is, how you imagine your place in the world. Responses to this survey came in from across the United States and far beyond. Favorite work from the magazine reached all the way back to our first issue, in 2005.

The following pages display a selection of the thoughts shared by our readers and contributors; a map showing the places some of you call home; and an illustration of where those favorite pieces live in your imaginations. We begin with eight of many answers for the question, What’s your ecotone?

All my life I’ve lived in the suburbs, that ecotone between life and its opposite. A mile from my current home is a small mall. Between this mall’s parking lot and its main entrance stands a concrete planter of obligatory flowers. Inspirational quotes and misquotes are painted in bright colors on the sides of the planter—lines attributed to Thoreau, Emerson, John Burroughs, and “Jon Muir.” There’s a little more life inside the building than in your average suburban mall; for one thing, there’s a stage for performers. But it still feels like a mall, and in front of the stage, a sign reads, “No dancing or standing while JoAnn Fabrics is open.” As long as there’s daylight, though, my yard is busy with birds. I’ve spent the last hour in the yard, and in that time I’ve seen or heard red-winged blackbirds, red-breasted nuthatches, crows, a song sparrow, black-capped and chestnut-backed chickadees, a Steller’s jay, a flicker, a spotted towhee, purple and house finches, juncos, robins, pine siskins, and, in the distance, a bald eagle.

—kelly fine

Rochester Hills isn’t known as the deer-crash capital of Michigan for nothing. Here humans meet up and overlap with coyote, white-tailed deer, wild turkey, prairie remnants, old champion oaks. We’re one of the places in between. In between the paved-over lake plain and river delta to the south of us and the old farm fields and oak prairies of the interlobate moraine to the north, where an abundance of kettle lakes are home to great blue herons and cranberry bogs. Rochester was settled not long after the Detroit land bank opened and began handing out eighty-acre homesteads to pioneering immigrants who came from the east—places like Rochester, New York—especially after the Erie Canal opened, allowing waves and waves of people to land on Detroit’s shores. The hard edges of the city kept creeping up into the soft edges of the farms. What was once “up north” is now suburbs, and “up north” had to move further on up. But in between is still a home to the deer and coyote and river mink and great horned owls. They’re still checking us out, finding their niches, scratching out a living on what’s left—for now.

—mary tischler

I’ve always loved edges. In high school I was at the edge of so many groups—artists, athletes, academics, partiers … I’ve noticed it’s always more interesting at edge environments: beaches, marsh lands, streets where two neighborhoods meet. And, as a gay woman, I move between men and women easily, have a wider perspective maybe. I live a five-minute walk from the ocean. When I walk by the water, or even when I’m in it, diving or kayaking, I feel how I can never be a part of it—it’s too huge, and my share is that narrow strip where the land meets the sea.

—dawn paul [End Page 105]

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