Summary

The author opens “Bogs’ by referencing a Chinese proverb that invokes the mysterious nature of water. Like water, she imagines that ancient people were awestruck by much of their natural surroundings. Though the terminology for wetland ecosystems has become so convoluted in modern times, human predecessors understood these nuances and had complex mythologies that informed their relationship with nature. They even built mythologies and creation stories around fossils they found in bogs.

This history is contrasted with a story about French soldiers who during the Seven Years War discovered a mastodon femur, two ivory tusks, and two teeth in a bog. They did not understand what they were looking at, but delivered the artifacts to the natural history museum in Paris, where the ivory tusks eventually disappeared.

The author details the process of succession wherein a fen becomes a bog, then she relates...