Bogged down

In praise of places which aren't for us (3 minute preview, 6 minute full article)

There’s a lesson I learned in the deep, sticky mud of a mangrove swamp. It wasn’t my first time wading through knee-deep mud at the behest of one of my educators (as I mentioned in last week’s article). This time, it was a university field trip, but the result was largely the same – a lot of very muddy students and not much science done. I think we tried to count the breathing roots of the mangroves, or perhaps mud crab burrows. At the time, it didn’t seem as if I’d learned very much in proportion to the damage we had done leaving hundreds of foot-shaped holes in the mud.

It’s not a mangrove swamp, but you get the picture - damage caused by people walking through the ‘vertical mire’ on Mt Kenya (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

As a part of my education, at school, at university and as part of clubs, I’d spent time in various outdoor places. I’d walked in the forest. I’d waded through streams. I’d rowed, paddled and sailed on lakes. As someone who was never very active as a child or teen, it was often hard work. When there was a group walking up a hill, I’d be the one lagging at the back, and feeling thoroughly guilty about it. When we had to take a turn rowing the dinghy, I’d be the least effective.

But the mangrove swamp was an equaliser. Nobody was good at wading through the mud. Maybe fitness helped, but none of us did it easily.

Walking on land, we are used to the idea that when we put our feet down, they stay where we put them. The earth is solid, it holds us and it holds our vehicles, buildings and infrastructure. Water is not our habitat, but we have a few tricks. Some of us are great swimmers. And of course we have invented boats, allowing us to navigate everything from shallow rivers to the great oceans. With boats, waterways become a useful way to move from place to place. We have invented aircraft to fly through the air, and even take us to space. Scuba gear and submarines take us beneath the sea surface.

In a few cases, there are types of swamp where hovercraft and airboats can be used – generally the ones which are more like shallow lakes than muddy mires. But in many swamps, there’s no suitable vehicle and walking isn’t an option either. Moving through swamps is difficult, dirty and slow. It makes swamps hostile places, at least as far as people are concerned. We don’t belong there.

It’s little wonder, then, that swamps have become metaphors for everything we dislike. Various politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, Donald Rumsfeld and Nancy Pelosi, have spoken of ‘draining the swamp’. Swamps are also described as something to escape from – whether it is dishonesty, conformity, radical ideology or the status quo. To be swamped is to be overwhelmed. We can become bogged down by bureaucracy, mired in controversy, trapped in a quagmire of intrigue and wade through a morass of clichés.

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