Fen, Bog and Swamp: from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize

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ESQ: When discussing the draining of wetlands, you make several tongue-in-cheek references to the resulting “most productive soil in the world.” I think you’d agree that our society tends to have a rather toxic concept of “productive.” Where do you think this mania for productivity comes from? And, no, it's not just nature going through one of its warming cycles. According to a story I heard on NPR, what we're in now should have been a cooling cycle. If not for what we human beings have been doing. This information is important to fully understanding the scale and cost of wetland losses we've inflicted on the planet. Author Proulx (whose use of "yclept" in this book I note here with a big smile, as it's a favorite underused word of mine) is an experienced campaigner when it comes to putting English through its paces to evoke a sense of place and a perception of mood:

There is lots that is wonderful in here (though I am probably biased as someone who loves swamps). Here, Proulx gives us a thoughtful, inquisitive, expansive dive into several different peatland worlds. Researched and written during Proulx’s isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, these essays feel like spending an evening with a curious and particularly erudite friend who gets on a roll sharing about what’s been intriguing then lately. And I loved that! I learned a ton from this book, and its bountiful asides and passageways left me with more than two dozen Wikipedia tabs open on my computer. The writing is rich, wry, and evocative. It was truly a pleasure to read. During the pandemic, Annie Proulx studied, researched and wrote essays on the destruction of the peatlands and what it means for the health of the environment and ultimately the future of all life on earth. These essays, often quite personal in nature, have been expanded into this short book. Perhaps most radically of all, the book takes aim at the modern notion of “progress” and “the hubristic idea that ‘now’, the time in which we live, is superior to all previous times”. Proulx argues for a radical humbleness in the face of complex ecosystems that we cannot begin to understand, let alone replicate. Her view, one that would be shared by philosophers such as Karl Popper and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is that the web of life in which we’re enmeshed is far too vast and complicated for us to technocratically “manage”. Proulx goes slightly mystical, or else gives a shout-out to Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, when she invokes Alexander Pope's genius loci to describe the particular environs of fens, bog, and swampland. She grew up playing in wetlands, she shares many memories of the many species of birds, fish, amphibians, etc., that she watched as a child, and it's very clear that the destruction of wetlands feels like a harbinger of doom to her. As a child I often went camping near a protected coastal estuary and have fond memories of tromping through mudflats with herons, cranes, and flamingos. I don't know if they're still there, but I hope so.

Her research, no matter what the COVID-19 pandemic hampered, is clearly thorough. And she cannot possibly be faulted here. The inclusion of the newly fascinating Doggerland seems to have held her attention a smidge too long, but she so obviously scoured all potentially relevant research that she regretted leaving anything out, lest she be unable to convince. Perhaps the most moving section of the book is the portrait of the English Fens, largely destroyed from the 16th century onwards

ESQ: You mention the conclusions drawn by researchers that were later found to be inaccurate (in regard to bog drownings as punishment for homosexuality, for example). Are there any commonly accepted climate change conclusions that you think are erroneous? The sphagnum moss of the bogs “holds a third of the earth’s organic carbon,” I learned. When drained, the soil still leaks CO2 for a hundred years. “It can take ten thousand years for a bog to convert to peat but in only a few weeks a human on a peat cutter machine can strip a large area down to the primordial gravel.” In ancient times, humans made offerings to the bogs. Including humans. Bog people have been discovered across the world, preserved by the acidity and low oxygen, telling their gruesome stories of human sacrifice. My own bog-born forebears had few sweet days. They cut peat to get through the winter and were without a cushion of prosperity from which they might appreciate the wonders of sphagnum. There were times in the life of my Highland family when theological disputes led them to worship separately, out on the moor, where they cast their Gaelic psalms into the wind:In the book, Proulx reveals the extensive harm that civilization has inflicted upon wetlands, but also highlights those who are taking action to mitigate the damage. While pragmatic about the severity of the situation, as she explained to Esquire, Proulx also finds reasons for hope and even joy in the wide-ranging efforts to adapt in the face of an increasingly inhospitable climate. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

That's what humans have done as we have created settlements and begun using the land for our own needs with scant regard for how things are connected. Annie Proulx set out to write an essay or two, turning her love of nature and her concern for the disappearance of landscapes and species into a research project. That project grew into this detailed, fact-filled book that I will be thinking about for a long time. Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Literary Hub!* A Finalist for the 2022 NBCC Awards in Nonfiction, the 2023 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award, and the NEIBA 2023 New England Book Award* Delves into the history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis [...] Proulx uses nimble prose to knit together scientific facts, personal experiences, and literary references while deciphering the nomenclature of these three subtly diverse wetlands which collectively hold the key to human history" I had started reading Norman Maclean’s novella A River Runs Through It for the first time and once at the house decided to read to the end before I went inside. It was an utterly quiet windless golden day, the light softening to peach nectar as I read and ultimately reached the last sentence: “I am haunted by waters.” I closed the book and looked toward the swamp. Sitting on the stone wall fifteen feet away was a large bobcat who had been watching me read. When our eyes met the cat slipped into the tall grass like a ribbon of water and I watched the grass quiver as it headed down to the woods, to the stream, to the swamp.” Swamp" is the last and most climate-focused chapter which totals the loss of bird species, naming and describing the obliteration of the great American swamps, including the excellently named "Great Dismal". Proulx is a mistress of fascination, pulling the reader deep within her love for these places, then turning around and arguing furiously against their destruction. She shows us how they can be restored, how they can help heal a warming world, and makes clear their potential to both provide the cure and put the final nail in the coffin if they continue to be mismanaged.Esquire: You’re primarily known as a novelist, and this is your first major work of nonfiction in a while. Why fens, bogs, and swamps? What about them caught your interest? Not necessarily so during the prehistorical past (20,000 years ago) when Britain wasn't an island, but the fringe of the Europe/Asia landmass. Rolling plains extended where the North Sea is today, all the way to the Netherlands. It was Doggerland. Such riches from the land: fish, fowl, vegetable. People didn't want to leave, even after the water had been gradually moving in. Peat-preserved remains of long-ago living situations get fished up accidentally in the North Sea.