Lately, my encounters with wildlife have been marked by illness and death. Due to the rampant, highly contagious rabbit disease myxomatosis1, I have encountered sick and dead hares almost daily in recent weeks. This has made me urgently ask: how is resonance possible when it comes to death and dying, and how can one come to terms with this subject in encounters at eye level?
I feel a wave of sadness when confronted with a dying hare, or the body of a dead hare. Upon analyzing this response, I asked myself about the resonant quality of the experience. My theoretical research led me to Christian Ståhl’s thoughts on ‘dark resonance’2, which builds on Timothy Morton’s ‘dark ecology’3.
Dark ecology thinks the truth of death, a massive cognitive relief that if integrated into social form would embody nonviolence. (Morton 2016, 161)
In dark ecology, the boundaries between different species, between the self and the environment, and life and death are blurred. The experiencing subject is immersed in a biological web, making it unclear where the subject begins and ends. In the context of dark ecology, sadness and depression are understood as forms of ecological awareness.
The promise of dark resonance is that we, by embracing the fluidity of the borders between life, death and the subject, can become differently related to the world, and to even find meaning in pain. (Ståhl 2025)
In response to my experience of dark resonance, I set up a temporary memorial for one of the dead hares right where I had found him, at the side of the road. I lit three candles, arranged them around the corpse and closed my eyes, sending peace to the hare. Then I went to my spot beyond the walnut tree and watched the installation.
A passer-by came down the road, stopped by the hare, looked at the arrangement and took a photo. When he saw me, he came over and started talking to me about the hares and the terrible disease. “I liked the candles,” he told me. “I took a photo.”
Ten minutes later, I ended the event as the wind had blown out the candles. I gently touched the hare’s paw, then moved its body to the meadow next to the road. I realised what my goals had been. Firstly, I wanted to express my grief at the hares’ deaths, and at the death of this specific hare. Secondly, I wanted people to notice the hares’ deaths and suffering, and to no longer pass by their corpses indifferently. Ultimately, I also wanted to prevent cars from running over their bodies, as often happened.
To conclude, I arranged the candles beneath the walnut tree and created a sign that I placed at their center, which read:
Memorial for a hare who died on 13 October 2025
- A viral disease caused by the myxoma virus; common symptoms of infection are: swelling, redness, and lesions around the eyes, nose, ears, genitals; fever and lethargy; respiratory problems. The disease can progress rapidly, with death occurring within days or weeks. There is no specific treatment, and supportive care is rarely successful. ↩︎
- Ståhl, Christian. 2025. Dark resonance: On the possibility of resonance with death. Acta Sociologica, 68, 2. ↩︎
- Morton Timothy. 2016. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press. ↩︎