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

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Proulx’s substantial talents and experience and her modest stated goals should make for a freewheeling and compelling narrative … but unfortunately it is more freewheeling than compelling. The ‘personal essay’ basic research results in a digressive rather than propulsive collection of explanations, references, and anecdotes, and the book does not achieve its potential. In the section on fens for example, Proulx mines her research and reading to demonstrate the long connection between people and fen, but the references are overused. The effect is similar to a researcher trying to strengthen a paper by the volume rather than quality of citations. The effect is dilutive. There is no doubt that we are creating a vast ecological disaster with the ways we treat our bogs and fens. Recently, we find that the underground peat fires that burn for months in the northern tundra regions, not only emit vast amounts of CO2 and methane which had been sealed up by the peat, but even the heavy deposit of soot that settles on the melting ice causes the ice to lose reflectivity and so makes it absorb more heat and melt even faster. As the glaciers and ice melt, as ocean and groundwater rise there will come a world of new estuaries, rivers, lakes, fens, and, eventually--vast bogs and swamps. A two-thousand-year-old lump of ancient birch tar used as chewing gum with the imprint of a child’s teeth in it gave me a smart sting of immediacy. At the same time that I want to know, I shudder internally at my own shameless snoopery.” A lifelong environmentalist, Annie Proulx brings her wide-ranging research and scholarship to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important yet little understood role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that greatly contribute to climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four stunning parts, Proulx documents the long-misunderstood role of these wetlands in saving the planet.

Bog" is a fascinating examination of the secrets of this peaty land, as well as the makeup of its plants, in particular the miraculous, life-sustaining Sphagnum Moss. Proulx dredges up bog bodies, reveals their secrets to the reader, interpreting what they can tell us about society now and long ago. The bog is a place to be feared, an absorber of bones and gallons of blood shed in battle. A fascinating, captivating new book by Annie Proulx that reveals the mystery and majesty of fens, bogs, and swamps.” —CJ Lotz, Garden & Gun Magazine Solving THAT conundrum is another book entirely, but perhaps an octogenarian's frustrated nostalgia will make a difference after all. That is, to know what the difference is between fen, bog and swamp. To be able to go into a wetland and look around at it and say, "Aha, I know this is a swamp, it's full of trees. Or, this is a bog, full of quaking sphagnum moss." It's more didactic than a call to arms. That's just not my thing.In Fen, Bog & Swamp, Annie Proulx shows us how to fall in love with wetlands . . . [The book] pays the kind of artistic and emotional attention to swamps that is usually reserved for sunsets and canyons.” —Kiley Bense, Inside Climate News

As a nonscientist, Proulx explains in accessible language how fens, bogs and swamps differ by water level and vegetation, and how crucial each of these ecosystems is to a balanced environment. The very short version is that they store carbon dioxide and methane, so when peatlands are disrupted, those gases are released and contribute to the climate change crisis, which is itself one of the things causing those disruptions. Peatlands are also home to a staggering number of plant and animal species integral to a healthy ecological community. Fen, Bog & Swamp is an excellent text that should be read by all those who still think, hubristically, that everything on earth is a resource for humans to consume and destroy. However, it also shows us that there is hope, that the earth has the potential to heal, if we are prepared to change the way we act and think. But take away from any read the best, accept that not all of it was made with your taste in mind, and Author Proulx's essential message shines a harsh lime-light onto the instrumentalist Judeo-Christian worldview that's landed us in this awful mess: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.” From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx—whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth—comes a riveting, revelatory history of our wetlands, their ecological role, and what their systematic destruction means for the planet. I think that Proulx's inclusion of so many varying treatments of her subject—a little science, personal observations and even imagination, lament over environmental destruction by ill-advise wetland management—left me feeling that the book is weak in unity and focus. However, the book also has several strengths that recommend it to readers: SWAMP: A swamp is a minerotrophic peat-making wetland dominated by trees and shrubs. Its waters tend to be shallower than those of fens and bogs.

Perhaps the most moving section of Fen, Bog & Swamp is the portrait of the English Fens, largely destroyed from the 16th century onwards. Proulx conjures up the lost landscape, teeming as it was with eels and sturgeon, beavers and water voles, ospreys and cranes and populated by an unmourned fen people who “poled through curtains of rain, gazed at the layered horizon, at curling waves that pummelled the land edge in storms”. But for all her sadness at the destruction of our wetlands and what she calls “the awfulness of the present”, perhaps what’s most interesting about the book is her refusal to engage in the usual left versus rightpolitical debate. 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' If there is a fault to be found with Fen, Bog & Swamp, it is that at times Proulx’s richly descriptive passages dissolve into slightly purple, overly lyrical prose. The writing is always impassioned, however, and this is equally a symptom of her drive to reverse the damage that’s been done. She describes how there were 53,000 square miles of essential mangrove forests left in 2010: within six years, these were reduced to 51,700. If care and sense are applied, Proulx explains, these mangrove areas can be restored and can protect our coasts, just as the revitalisation of the wetlands promises to protect the whole world. But people whose ancestors have "conquered" swamps tend to have internalized "a deep and abiding loathing of wetlands." That's what's showing up in Michener's mid-twentieth-century book, too. We all tend to have some of that attitude ingrained. The noted novelist turns to environmental history to describe the workings of the world’s wetlands. An enchanting history of our wetlands... Imbued with the same reverence for nature as Proulx’s fiction, Fen, Bog, and Swamp is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action." —Adrienne Westenfeld, EsquireAnnie Proulx wanted to understand and organize the massive amount of information about wetlands and their loss and the impact on climate change. Her essay turned into a book. In brief, wetlands store CO2, and their destruction releases it into the atmosphere. Once lost, wetlands are not easily restores. But across the world, we are endeavoring to reclaim lost wetlands.

She is trying to point out how totalitarian either of the main political parties can or has become based on mythologizing history. From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, this riveting deep dive into the history of our wetlands and what their systematic destruction means for the planet “is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action” ( Esquire). This sobering history of our world’s rich wetlands explains the chilling ecological consequences of their destruction.” —New York Times Book Review In this latest effort Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Proulx stylizes herself as basic researcher of sorts. Her short book “started out as a personal essay to help [her] understand the wetlands that are so intimately tied to the climate crisis … [but] the literature is massive and [she] had to narrow down the focus to those special wetlands that form the peat that holds in the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane – the fens, bogs and swamps and how humans have interacted with them over the centuries.” An accomplished storyteller, she strives to convey to readers the application – the importance – of her research efforts.

My Review: First things first: Those title words aren't synonyms, exactly, so much as a family tree of naturally occurring wet places on Earth.

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