At the Edges

Interesting and unpredictable things can happen at the edge of where one thing ends and another begins. Sometimes this border is clear and well-defined, but more often the intersection of change can be messy and less certain. Borders exist between people and places, between daylight and darkness, between life and death. When we approach a border, we find that the edges are rough and shifting. They are tested by forces and react in ways the soft middle is not. Revelations come at the boundaries.

When you look across the field to the stand of trees that run outside the fence line, you spot a deer peeking out of the shadows. A big brown trout hugs the undercut bank feeding, safe with the cover of the tall grass bending overhead. Edges offer shelter and escape. Prey and predator both crave the fringes. The same place offering protection for some and for others a position to launch an ambush.

With camera in hand, I especially like the edges of the day, the still of the lake at sunrise as the mist burns off. Leaving a warm bed ahead of your alarm clock is a small price to pay. Later, the sunset colours light up clouds that have spent all day curdling in the heat. Shadows lengthen as daylight retreats.

Cartographers considered what was beyond the edge of the explored world and assumed dangers lay in wait. Their map might include warnings of dragons or other monsters for the traveler who ventured into the void. With the latest in satellite technology there is not much left uncharted.

The edge of one’s lifetime mostly seems a distant out-of-focus horizon. Then something happens that pulls it towards you and makes it suddenly urgent and sharp. Maybe it’s a friend’s cancer diagnosis. A car accident. And you realize the edge isn’t as far away as you might hope. If you’re lucky you dodge this realization when you’re young and it only comes when you have built a reserve of good memories to carry you over. Whenever it does arrive, it can be a wakeup call. It changes your sense of boundary and introduces an awareness of finality, of unavoidable endings and hard edges. Living takes on a new urgency and the things you put off demand renewed attention.

I used to daydream that if I received notice of my imminent finality, I would drop everything and rush to do all the things I had wanted to experience. Seek out the places I had wanted to see. Open the best wines. Break the rules I had kept conscientiously until then. Knowing a few close friends who have faced such a situation, I came to realize they were either too sick to do them, or too busy fighting to survive. By the time they were resigned to their fate, they had neither time nor energy to tackle their inventory of the unfulfilled.

Some, too few, come through such a scare having postponed fate. Do they trust in their luck or are they always looking over their shoulder? They have pushed back the edge but carry with them an awareness that it can take a giant step closer when you least expect it. Can the rest of us learn this lesson without such a trial.