The Interstitial Arts Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the study, support, and promotion of interstitial art: literature, music, visual and performance art found in between categories and genres – art that crosses borders. 
I am a lifetime birdwatcher – all the best birding quests are interstitial by nature. The best places to find the most species are precisely the habitats that overlap with and fall between larger, more homogenous zones.
In terms of the Northeastern U.S.A., a classic example is the hedgerow, the twisting, entwined cat’s cradle between acres of grass… I used to worm my way into hedgerows, literally wriggling on my belly, because hedgerows guard their secrets well with thorns and brambles, creepers and roots…then just lie and listen, peering out into the sunlit fields on either side…inside the hedgerow live the furtive creatures that one meets in Mirkwood and well beyond the groomed lawns at Toad Hall…hedgerows house those who dwell in Moomin-Valley…the shy Thrasher, the sly Catbird, all manner of voles, moles, weasels, shrews and badgers…the oddest flowers: dwarf trilliums, woodbine, dog periwinkle, hackberry….
I share this to say that we should revel in the ragged beauty of the interstitial, leave the fields of identical wheat to others. Nestling in hedgerows is the only way to really know the White-Throated Sparrow and the Chesnut-Sided Warbler…
Oh, and Shakespeare (and Tolkien) got it only half-right: what really move are hedgerows…sinuously and subtly re-defining the shape of the monochromatic fields…the lowly chokecherry and crabapple will sidle right up to your window without you even noticing it…
March 19th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Thanks for this! I have a book on birds and a bird sanctuary (Feathers of Hope, SUNY Press) coming out this summer, and all the birdwatchers I interviewed said exactly the same. It’s the in-between spaces where everything crosses over. And I know that my hedgerows are creeping toward my house. I hear them laughing at me in the night . . . .