Remnant Habitat in a Graveyard

NPR’s Morning Edition on Tuesday aired a story about wildlife biologists and other researchers in the Midwest exploring cemeteries, some with acreage that’s remained undisturbed for centuries, to find and study native species of plant and animal life that have otherwise disappeared. (“Scientists Stalk Cemeteries for Signs of Wildlife.”) One researcher says, “The future of conservation is in fragments” – meaning fragments of territory, which the story refers to as “habitat remnants.”

Although my interest isn’t scientific, I’ve long been drawn to these kinds, or other, similar kinds, of places – vacant lots, forgotten borderlands between developed areas, vestiges of natural landscape on the verge of being bulldozed, wild margins of tamed tracts. I can’t say when this attraction started, because it goes back as far as I can remember.

To me these little pockets of nature are as noble and as vital as any national park or monument. In dwelling on them (or, at my current location, in them), I’ve realized something further. All habitat is a remnant, and has been from the start. All territory is marginal, just as all time is limited.

In fact the first name for this website, in the idea stages, was “Marginal Existence” – except ultimately I felt people would have to work too hard to figure out how I mean this. Every place is fragmentary, and every second is fleeting – but they also live forever. Any experience in time and space – ‘moment’ and ‘horizon’ – is both marginal and eternal. How fitting to look for life in the graveyard.