Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role int he Climate Crisis ( New York: Sc ribber 2022), Annie Proulx.

Something less than a love letter, and certainly not a desperate plea for us to become environmental, Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog & Swamp nevertheless touches a nerve. We are familiar with the main plot: humanity’s dreary march toward a denuded and desolate word, our continuing encroachment on natural habitat, our impulse to take, alter and exploit for short-term gain, all these traits will create a hell-scape for future generations. In the end steely eyed environmentalism becomes apocalyptic vision. We feel helpless and carry feeling, as Proulix says, “a constant, low-grade guilt,” secretly wishing to escape the inevitability that stares us in the face.  

So much for the writer’s intent, and the impact of this short work. As protagonist she takes on the role of researcher, uncovering how crucial one type of environment, the soggy realms, are to human sense of self as well as to the planet. 

First she needs to clarify what these murky realms are. A fen is peatland fed by ground water rich in dissolved minerals, that often exists with brown mosses. A bog is peatland that gets water primarily from precipitation, and is not depend on ground water. Sphagnum moss is the main form of vegetation. A swamp is peatland dominated by trees, shrubs and grasses. The water is rich in minerals. And a mire is all three of these, found in locations like mangrove swamps. All these can be called wetlands. And all were created in the last ice age as glaciers retreated, leaving behind puddles and gouges in the landscape. Humans have lived in and around wetlands ever since the last ice age. They entered into our consciousness and are still present in our stories, our vocabularies, and our religious imagery. We have often feared and detested these watery areas, which make up around three percent of the land area of earth. This explains how we have dealt with them in most case—by draining them. Once drained the land is amazingly fertile for several cycles, after which it becomes normal and often infertile farmland.

Most wetlands contain a unique vegetative material, peat. Peat is organic matter pushed so far down into water that there is no oxygen. Over centuries peat solidifies yet remains spongy. Peat forms into layers that can be cut and used as fuel or building material. They also trap anything else that happens to fall into the water, like dead bodies, and in so doing stop the decay process which depends on oxygen. Peat is also an outstanding way to lock in carbon and gasses like methane, keeping them from reaching the atmosphere. 

Proulx begins with the English fens. The fens were once a major feature of the countryside. Beginning in the 1600s they were drained and they now makes up only 1% of the total land area they previously occupied.

Proulx moves from fens to bogs, a particular subset of wetlands dominated by the sphagnum mosses. Sphagnum moss has been used as bandage and for healing, for diapers, and to preserve butter (“bog butter”). Bogs have been used as burial and, specifically, sites of sacrifice for thousands of years. Bogs come in many varieties—raised, string, patterned, blanket. They keep tons of methane and CO2 safety under wraps in their nether-regions. And they occasionally give up preserved femurs and mummies, to the delight of researchers. Ironically, while lack of oxygen and the acid nature of the bog preserves skin, hair, and other materials, the polysaccharide sphagnum chemical that accounts for this preservation also leaches into bones and softens them. This was the opposite of fens, which preserve bones well but destroy the outer surfaces of bodies.

Swamps differ from swamps and fens due to the mixture of deciduous trees and shrubs in the wet surroundings, often looking like islands. The swamp, as Proulx notes, is one step away from becoming dry forest. Unlike marshes swamps are more than grasses—they contain trees and shrubs. Proulx lists many of the remaining swamps in the US, many of which have benefited from recent efforts at preservation. These include the Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, The remnants of the Great Black Swamp in Ohio, the Kanakee Marsh in Indiana, the Limberlost Swamp in Indiana, and the Great Horizon Marsh in Wisconsin. 

Knowing what we know about wetlands—not much, since scientific awareness of the importance of wetlands is recent—there are efforts to reverse history and reinvigorate wetlands. The Roy Society for the Protection of Birds bought 740 acres earmarked for restoration in 1995. The National Trust in 2017 bought 175 acres near Dover. Worldwide, there are valuable areas of mixed fen, bog, and swamp—the Wasure National Park in Papua, New Guinea, the Vasyugan Mire in Siberia, the Kakadu Wetlands in Australia, the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and the Florida Everglades.

Wetlands in general have fascinated me for years, perhaps due to some intuition of their importance in our collective consciousness. I intuitively accept the need to preserve coastline wetlands as filters between types of lands, and how easy it is to decide to simply drain or pave them over. We must accept that they are disappearing. Proulx’s straight-forward investigation clearly leads to the conclusion that we must now at least try to preserve these zones of transition.