Peat
Nourishes and Saves
Peat
has been on my mind lately. Here in Canada’s
Northwest Territories, I’m surrounded by forested
peatlands. Spruce, birch, and tamarack grow out of
the soggy, black soil and spongy moss. A few
months ago, the ground glistened with water and
popped with the color of peat-loving wild
cranberries and rose hips. These days, it’s
covered with snow. When I step into the woods, I
can hear the waterlogged earth crack with ice
under each step.
For the
Journal's upcoming winter issue, I reviewed
journalist Edward Struzik’s Swamplands, an ode to
peat and the scientists who study it. In the
introduction to his book, Struzik points to the
variance of peatlands and the words we use to
describe them. We have mires, moors,
and marshes. Swamps. Fens. In
northern Canada and Alaska, you’ll hear
muskeg, a word of Cree origin. There are
hummocks, palsas, pingos, and
pocosins. And, of course, there are
bogs — one of which was a “jewell which
dazzled” Thoreau.
Our language of
peat hints at the complexity of these ecosystems
and their influence on us. Hat tip to Robert Macfarlane: Language is
central to our relationship with place, and peat
seems to have taken a main role in our
placemaking.
On a broader scale, it’s
important for us to recognize the enormous
significance — ecologically, culturally — of
intact peat-based ecosystems, particularly now
that we’ve spent the last 200 years draining and
terraforming them for farmland or other uses. As
Merritt Turetsky, director of
the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the
University of Colorado Boulder says, mires, moors,
and bogs are all “climate
champions.”
The good news is that
this crucial conversation has started to happen on
the global stage. At COP26 in Glasgow earlier this
month, peat got a lot of play through the
Peatlands Pavilion, where scientists could talk
with delegates directly about peat as a climate
change solution. After an otherwise
disappointing climate conference, this gives me an
ounce of hope.
But as we contemplate
peat as a climate solution, I’m also inspired by
peat as place. So this Thanksgiving, here in the
muskeg, surrounded by berry bushes frozen and
dormant for the winter, I’m going to enjoy my
cranberry sauce a little more than usual, and give
thanks to the peat they grow on.
Austin
Price
Contributing Editor,
Earth Island Journal
Photo by: Sophia
Smirnova |
