Thread by @queenofpeat

I often discuss peatland science, but they also are iconic in art & literature. The first evidence is the preponderance of synonyms. Peatland, mire, moor, muskeg, morass, quagmire, slough, glade, holm, polder, swale. Beautiful yet haunting words. Image: seedball.co.uk/going-peat-free 1/

@profmarkreed Cue the colloquialisms! Don't get bogged down. This is a complete quagmire. It swamped him. I fell into a morass. He became mired. Sensing a theme? They are all about getting stuck, & peatland folk know a lot about that. 2/

@profmarkreed “They best pass over the world who trip over it quickly; for it is but a bog. If we stop, we sink.” -Elizabeth I

This is the earliest peatland quote I could find. Presumably the lesson is to keep moving, keep the momentum, for better or worse.

Image: ancient-origins.net/history-famous…

@profmarkreed From Tolkien, to Seamus Heamy, Thomas Hardy, & Thoreau, writers long have used peatlands as symbols of wildlands & otherworldliness. A space where it is difficult to tell the difference between life & death, between solid & fluid. There are scientific underpinnings for this. 4/

@profmarkreed For example, when we core into peat, we cannot really tell where live plants end & dead peat starts. Is peat vegetation, is it soil? It's in between. This is why I am so fascinated by it. Can we really call it a solid material when it often holds way more water by mass? 5/

@profmarkreed "And as doors to the next world go, a bog ain’t a bad choice. It’s not quite water and it’s not quite land – it’s an in-between place." -Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children 6/

Image: thebookbuds.wordpress.com/2016/10/09/rev…

@profmarkreed “Bogs are very mysterious. Strange things, with thick hair, remain at the bottom of a bog. These things have no eyes, but they eat everything which comes to them, and from their bodies water flows always.”

-K. Berry, Myths and legends of the Great Plains
7/

@profmarkreed Perhaps my favorite: "To love a swamp, however, is to love what is muted and marginal, what exists in the shadows, what shoulders its way out of mud and scurries along the damp edges of what is most commonly praised. And sometimes its invisibility is a blessing." -B. Hurd 8/

@profmarkreed But you wouldn't force me to choose just one favorite would you?

The bog floor shakes,
water cheeps and lisps
as I walk down
rushes and heather.

-Seamus Heaney, North
9/

@profmarkreed Why are peatlands so iconic, finding their way into art, novels, movies, & culture? They support life but exist because of death & detritus. They look like land but are deceptively fluid, often impossible to traverse. They smell of rot but preserve bodies to minute detail. 10/

@profmarkreed To Irish artist Joseph Beuys, bogs were “the liveliest elements in the European landscape, not just from the point of view of flora, fauna, birds and animals, but as storing places of life, mystery and chemical change, preservers of ancient history”. 11/

@profmarkreed Who can forget the dead marshes in Lord of the Rings? “They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water…..Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their sliver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead” -Tolkien
12/

@profmarkreed Why is this so disturbing to us? Bodies were often tossed after a heinous death into peatlands, where the violence was preserved. This is not an image we want to hold in our minds. This is where culture and science meet in tension. 13/

@profmarkreed "One inch from the wall of brown turf he froze. There’s something here. In the earth. A hand."
Bog Child by S. Dowd

Image: nautil.us/issue/27/dark-… 14/

@profmarkreed Peatlands also symbolize something in all of us. They are rugged & resilient landscapes. But if pushed too hard by humans they can unravel quickly, and often never recover fully or entirely. Simultaneously tough and sensitive, this speaks to many people. 15/

@profmarkreed Chapman et al. write that historically it was common for humans to depend on & coexist w/ vast stretches of wetlands. But due to widespread drainage, we live in a dryland-dominated world. Perhaps peatland art/literature help reconnect us w/ our past. 16/ theconversation.com/bogs-are-uniqu…

@profmarkreed "It's a funny thing about bogs. You can fill them with rocks and sand...but bogs go right on behaving like bogs. Early in the spring they breathe ice and make their own mist, in remembrance of the time when they had black water and their own sedge blossoming...." -T. Jansson 17/

@profmarkreed Peatlands are vital for diversity, carbon storage, environmental reconstruction, & controlling climate. I hope I've highlighted their importance as cultural icons. They appeal to our need to understand light v. dark, known v. unknown, life v. death. They need more attention. Fini