The Harvard biologist EO Wilson wrote that chopping down the rainforest to make money is like burning a priceless Renaissance painting to cook a meal. Proulx wants us to see the loss of wetlands in the same way – and to appreciate the beauty in these swampy and often stinking places. Boy, does she succeed. The prose is just magnificent ... She is particularly adept at describing the ebb and flow of estuarine waters that define these shifting and unpredictable places ... perhaps what’s most interesting about the book is her refusal to engage in the usual left versus right political debate ... Instead, Proulx makes a more difficult and unsettling argument: that we are all, in our own way, complicit in the environmental despoliation happening around us. She doesn’t blame Donald Trump or Joe Biden – her beef is with the Judeo-Christian belief that creation is made for humans, meaning we can use the world as we wish.
... an information-packed short history that argues for their preservation and restoration ... 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 ... One of Proulx’s chapters is called 'Discursive Thoughts on Wetlands,' which sums up her approach. She ranges widely, both thematically and geographically, from the small Limberlost Swamp in Indiana to the huge Vasyugan Swamp in Siberia. She considers plenty of archaeology, history and literaturealong the way, sprinkling in reminiscences of her own wetland encounters as well.
The author’s accounts are wide-ranging and discursive, and they invite an attentive reader to pursue further investigation of many tantalizing topics, from the drowned Doggerland that once connected the British Isles to the European continent, to the unhappy history of English enclosure laws, to the ongoing efforts to restore drained marshes in southern Iraq ... Proulx wears her passion prominently on her sleeve, but — unlike in a work of fiction — it feels appropriate here.
National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning Proulx’s attunement to the intricacies and vulnerabilities of nature and humankind’s reckless exploitation of the living world shapes her celebrated fiction ... Proulx’s concern for the future of life on earth as the planet warms is acute, while her inquiry into the watery places where peat is found balances alarm and despair with wonder and affirmation of nature’s ability to rebound.
With the exception of 'heroes of the bog'—sphagnum mosses—she does not write extensively about wetlands’ flora and fauna. Rather, her focus is on human relationships with wetlands, including a fascinating account of northern Europe’s Iron-age bog bodies. Her eye for folly is sharply trained on the long record of ruinous drainage 'projects.' But while there are many occasions for eco-grief in the book, there are also glimmers of hope: e.g., in the scientists who laid the groundwork to the understanding of these ecosystems and the many restoration projects underway ... Fans of Proulx’s fiction, even those with marginal interest in peatlands, will be intrigued by the snippets of memoir and the habits of a writer’s mind that this collection reveals.
... stunning ... Her dire warnings are leavened with glimpses of potential hope, but the bigger picture is bleak ... Proulx’s prose is, as ever, stunning ... This resonant ode to a planet in peril is tough to forget.
... ranges widely in this short book. She provides a particularly good compact history of the draining of the fens of eastern England in an act pitting capitalists against working people and turning the vast wetlands, 'one of the world’s richest environments,' to farmland—and, of course, releasing greenhouse gases to accompany those generated by the first factories of the Industrial Revolution ... An eloquent, engaged argument for the preservation of a small and damp yet essential part of the planet.
