Introduction

I remembered that contact zones called ecotones, with their edge effects, are where assemblages of biological species form outside their comfort zones. These interdigitating edges are the richest places to look for ecological, evolutionary, and historical diversity…. Our house is along a creek in a steep valley, where walking up from the creek on either northern- or southern-facing hillsides puts one dramatically into changing ecologically mixed-species assemblages. Naturalcultural histories are written on the land, such that the former plum orchards, sheep pastures, and logging patterns vie with geological soil types and humidity changes to shape today’s human and nonhuman inhabitants of the land.