Meal in the Verge

By Ash Hanson

Verge: ​(noun​) something that borders, limits, or bounds: such as a paved or planted strip of land at the edge of a road​; (verb​) to be on the border: to be in transition or change.​

“May All Living Things Be Safe. May All Living Things Be Wild.” This was the call and response repeated after each person around the table of a dinner party, being held in the ditches of Nebraska, repeated after sharing stories of their experiences with​ roadkill and wildlife, ​moments of life and death​, in the verge.

​Nebraska-based multimedia artist, Lee Emma Running, has spent her artistic career in the verge, carefully collecting, honoring, and grieving the wildness and lost lives that she discovers there. Her work includes hand-polished roadkill deer skeletons that have been delicately repaired with cast glass and white gold leaf​, and cast-iron molds of tires, teeth, and bones she finds in the verge, inviting the viewer to look deeply at the damage human systems have caused on our non-human relatives and the heaviness felt when we pause to bear witness to these everyday acts of violence.

On the week of July 16th, Lee invited dinner guests to join her for a Meal in the Verge. Three events were held during this period, each in a different verge location in and around Omaha, Nebraska. I had the honor of being the co-facilitator for all three events, in which guests were greeted by a guide, wearing an embellished highway vest, and guided through tall prairie grasses or freshly cut grass ditches, to bear witness.

During this same week, a number of national events occurred in a country on the verge. One presidential candidate had an assassination attempt, another stepped down from his campaign, while each side accused the other of threatening the American democratic system; a 36-year old black woman was murdered in her home by a police officer; wildfires and smoke covered part of the country, while floodwaters drenched another, the earth experienced it’s hottest day on human record… with many of us responding like deer in headlights, as we felt the weight of being entrenched in the deep volatility of this moment, this time and place, of life in the verge.

As the guests arrived, flushed from the journey on a hot summer Midwestern day, Lee washed each of their hands in cool water. We wrote our names on placards, imprinted with the words we would soon repeat in unison. We sat next to people we did not know and Lee grounded us with an excerpt from the long-form poem “Apologia” by Barry Lopez – an account of his cross-country journey, witnessing and grieving the bodies of animals, small and large, killed on the road:

“…I do not meet the eyes of passing drivers. Whoever they are, I feel anger toward them in spite of the sparrow and gull I myself have killed. We treat the attrition of lives on the road like the attrition of lives in war: horrifying, unavoidable, justified. Accepting the slaughter leaves people momentarily fractured, embarrassed.”

We were invited to meet each other’s eyes.

Lee asked us to introduce ourselves and to turn over the cast-iron, tire-like plates, each weighing about 35 pounds. Against the light, white table cloth and soft breeze, there is a contradictory heaviness here, that also feels grounding. We served the guests food prepared with local ingredients by two Nebraska nonprofits, No More Empty Pots and Free Farm Syndicate.

We grazed in silence for a moment, with the noise of the fast-moving vehicles on one side, and the familiar sound of silverware on plates, on the other. One guest identified this juxtaposition as ‘doing something that feels safe and familiar, in a place that feels unsafe and unfamiliar.’ This sentiment shivered through my body, as I thought about the events of the past week. We can all relate.

I picked up a bone tool made from a deer calf, which acted as a talking stick, and we went around the table sharing stories of our own experiences with the verge – some humorous, some tragic – all told with humility and received with reverence. After each story was shared, the teller began the call,; the table responded: “May All Living Things Be Safe. May All Living Things Be Wild.”

There is, of course, inherent tension between safety and wildness. We name this complication. Is wildness, inherently unsafe? Can safety exist in the wild? We desire both of these things to be true, but is it possible to have both?

These words are especially charged in this moment in America’s story. How often have I have heard friends and passersby repeat, “these are wild times.” I reflect on how one person’s creation of a sense of safety, may inadvertently increase another’s sense of danger. One person’s version of freedom looks and feels like wildness, and another’s looks and feels like safety. There is a contradictory heaviness here, that feels nearly impossible to lift.

When the meal is complete, Lee reminds us that we cannot undo this experience. It has happened. We have gathered, grazed, listened, and observed, together, to our experiences with life and death, safety and wildness. She asks us, now what are we going to do with the fact that we have borne witness in the verge?

Here we are. A country on the verge of major transitions that have great implications. A time full of everyday acts of violence. Where our definitions of safety and wildness bring unintended consequences to our human and non-human relatives. What is our responsibility for naming and knowing this fact? And, how do we bear collective witness and begin to repair? What is the cast glass and gold leaf for our country’s broken bones?

I look to the artists, like Lee, who invite us to pause, observe, name, and call us into action. The cultural workers tending to the stories and safety of their herds in the middle of this wild country. Those who remind us, that while we may not be able to lift the heavy realities this liminal time brings to our country, on our own, we can begin by sitting at a table with a small group of people, acknowledging the tensions that exist in this moment. We can be curious about each other’s experiences in times of great transitions. We can express humility and reverence for our human and non-human relatives. We can meet each other’s eyes.

Follow Lee Running’s work at: https://www.leerunning.com or @lee.running.

Ash Hanson is the Creative Executive Officer (CEO) of Department of Public Transformation; a nonprofit organization working with rural arts and cultural workers at the intersection of creativity and civic life. www.publictransformation.org

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Previously Published on dailyyonder.com with Creative Commons License

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Photo credit: Illustration by Jan Pytalski / The Daily Yonder