The Weekly Anthropocene Reviews: Fen, Bog, & Swamp by Annie Proulx
A The Weekly Anthropocene Book Review
Fen, Bog, & Swamp is an unusual book. It’s essentially a personal nonfiction essay1 about wetland ecology by Annie Proulx, an acclaimed writer who’s penned award-winning works like The Shipping News (1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) and Brokeback Mountain (the one the movie’s based on). Pulitzer-tier Literature with a capital L writers like that don’t normally write environmental books; Ms. Proulx just wrote this because she was passionate about wetlands, and you can really tell. The prose of Fen, Bog, & Swamp is positively lyrical, elevating the quotidian biological wonders of wetlands to the grandeur they deserve. Take this description of the reproductive cycle of the water-storing, wetland-building, peat-depositing sphagnum moss.
“Close to the ground the air is still-the laminar boundary. About 10 centimeters above the sphagnum the turbulent air rolls. The sphagnum is aware. It must get its spores into that transport zone. So, when the sun heats its spherical spore capsules they tigh…
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