I’m an editor and a reader (at least, I used to be a reader back when I had time…) but for some reason I’ve never come across the term “ecotone” before tonight. I was doing a little “where-am-I-going-in-five days” research and I discovered that the Padlock Ranch (our destination, in case you missed it thus far) describes itself as follows:
“Padlock Ranch is located in the ecotone between the Big Horn Mountains and the mixed prairies of eastern Montana and Wyoming. This location provides a mixture of habitat types supporting a great diversity of plant and animal species.”
Huh, I thought. Ecotone. Wikipedia, here I come.
Whether you believe the stuff you read on that website or not, this is what “they” (in the much broader sense, of course) had to say:
An ecotone is a transition area between two kinds of landscape--Padlock Ranch, our destination next week, describes itself as just such a junction in time and place.
“An ecotone is a transition area between two adjacent but different patches of landscape, such as forest and grassland.[1] It may be narrow or wide, and it may be local (the zone between a field and forest) or regional (the transition between forest and grassland ecosystems).[2] An ecotone may appear on the ground as a gradual blending of the two communities across a broad area, or it may manifest itself as a sharp boundary line. The word ecotone was coined from a combination of eco(logy) plus -tone, from the Greek tonos or tension – in other words, a place where ecologies are in tension.”
This got me to thinking, as words often do, of how appropriate language can be at times (in contrast with how frustrating, confusing, an uninspiring it can so often be on a day-to-day basis). Here Martha and I are, about to leave our familiar landscape, our native roots, our comfort zone of similar foods, accents, and political views, and we’re setting off for a place altogether different. We will indeed be fed and housed on the land that joins our country’s distant coasts; we will observe, learn, and experience in an attempt to blend what we know of life, rest, scenic beauty, and horsemanship with that which we have never seen before in person. Will sharp boundaries be apparent or will we transition seamlessly from our East Coast world to the West?
Without hesitation, when I tell others about the long-dreamed-of trip that now lies in our IMMEDIATE future, they respond quickly and enthusiastically, “Oh, you’re going to have a BLAST!” But I, perhaps because of a tendency toward angst, think this experience will be about more than good times and great photographs. I’d venture to say it could even be a sea-changer. Once we have viewed a new patch of land, a new stretch of vista, and new corner of starry sky, will that not color our opinion of that which we left back home? Upon returning, will we not love it more or less than we did before Wyoming?
Transitions, by nature, are difficult fodder–for the body, mind, and spirit. And yet by choice we are headed to a bit of space that identifies itself as the very place transitions occur and where the rise and fall of area ecosystems–minute and grand–are borne out.
I think somewhere, deep within, we all know where to find what we’re looking for.
TSB Riding Adventures 