Episode 37: Landscapes of Being - Ecotones

Send us Fan MailIn the fourth episode of their Landscapes series, Marti and Todd explore ecotones — the zones in nature where different environments meet and interact, generating new forms of life that neither could produce alone. Todd opens with the etymology of ecotone — eco from the Greek for household, the living relationships of a place, and tone from the Greek for tension and stretching, the same root that gives us the vibration of a musical string and the vitality of a tonic. From the edge effect in ecology to the mangrove's capacity to generate what neither land nor sea could produce alone, Todd and Marti explore how biodiversity concentrates at edges and what that suggests about creativity, consciousness, and connection.The conversation moves from ecology to the ecotones within ourselves and between us. Marti introduces the indigenous understanding of border work — tending the edges so exchange can happen — and the Andean principle of complementarities, where different things come together to create something new that benefits everything. Todd challenges the geographic bias of center and edge, suggesting that sometimes the edge is the center, and that creativity lives in the stretching between what we know and what is arriving. Together they explore ecotones as a model for organizational partnerships, healing through participation, and the human capacity to steward the creation of the never-before-imagined.In Marti's Potentialities essay, "Infinite Arrivals," she reflects on how potentialities are not far away but always in motion toward us — and that the empty, spacious moments we often resist are themselves carrying vital information. Drawing on graphic design's principle of white space, she invites listeners to consider that they may be the very conduit for the next infinite arrival the world needs.