6 hours Ago
I have been watching her now for the past several minutes. My short dog, Daphne, has the “zoomies” — running as fast as she can all round the front yard. She is watching me watching her.
She likes an audience. But since last June when she and the tall dog, Liam, took me down during a flat-out zoomies run, and left me in their wake as a pile of broken bits and pieces, she is not allowed to run like this too close to me. Liam tries to make sure of it by standing guard in front of me.
I remind her with words of caution. And she respects the restrictions. But still, she likes an audience.
Today, as I stand watching her appreciatively, I’ve noticed a distinct pattern: she runs all around the property at the edges. She runs in circles, in figure-eights, leaping over rocks, dodging behind bushes, zig-zagging around trees. She races like the wind.
But she runs almost exclusively along the edges. Long before our collision, I noticed her running patterns in the backyard. But the backyard is almost completely paved over (a former owner’s preference, not my own).
So I assumed this was why she ran the perimeter back there, keeping to the only grass and soft ground available. But the front yard is almost entirely soft plant beds and lawn. And still, she runs the edges.
I first came across the term of “edge walkers” in an essay about formal religion and the natural world and about living in the thresholds between them. The author observed that edge walkers occupy a thin space, and called it a lonely place. She further wrote that the majority of people inhabit the vast spaces on either side of the edges.
And that edge walking is as much a calling as it is a choice. In nature, these edges or thresholds between biosystems are called “ecotones,” which contain the greatest biodiversity and are the most resilient as a result. It has always been a tradition of native cultures to “leave the edges wild.
” No matter how cultivated a field or manicured a lawn, it is good to leave the edges wild for the bugs and birds, butterflies and bunnies, and all manner of other creatures and seedlings. And, most especially, for the sake of diversity itself. Perhaps Daphne can feel this wildness under her feet as she runs the edges of the property.
Perhaps the ground there is cushioned with hidden moss beds, moist with mud, cooler in summer, warmer in winter, leaf-thick, twig-crunchy. I would suspect that the scents behind and beneath the bushes and trees at the edges are wonderfully compelling, that the shadows and sun dapples are perfectly intriguing. But I suspect, too, that it isn’t only in nature that the most exhilarating and informative diversity exists at the edges.
Cultural, political, social, religious — perhaps all of these environments offer edges to walk. Rather than getting swept along into manicured expanses of sameness, or trapped in cultivated rows of autocracy, the edges may be much preferred spaces in which to walk through all of life. Edge walking may be, indeed, a lonely thing.
Daphne is terribly introverted. But it must be a wonderfully liberating thing as well. To be open to such otherwise hidden delights and possibilities .
.. to be released from formats and fences.
.. to be freeform and resilient in thought and step.
Two millennia ago, a child was born who would spend his life walking the edges, bringing love and light and possibilities into dark places. Ever since then, his followers have been tasked with carrying that invitation of Peace on Earth forward. And if we don’t drop it, it may light the way for edge walkers through another 2000 years.
Perhaps Daphne is watching me watching her, not so much because she wants an audience, but because I am meant to have this Christmas reminder to always be an edge walker myself..
