Lauren McCain’s Reviews > Bogland: The Secret World That Defies Death and Protects Life > Status Update

It is easy to be awed by a mountain peak—its grandeur declares itself at a glance. But the beauty of bogland is more reticent, more elusive. To see it, you must linger.

Those drawn to these sodden places are attuned to subtleties others overlook or dismiss as mundane: the flicker of light mirrored in still pools, or the delicate patchwork of sedges & sphagnum, stitched together in a tapestry of greens and rusts.

During the Vietnam war, Vietnamese guerrilla fighters would hide in the jumbled tangle of mangrove roots, where, even if they were spotted, rifles could not penetrate the dense vegetation. So the US military sprayed dioxin, one of the most toxic substances known to man, as part of the herbicide Agent Orange to defoliate vegetation, deny enemy cover,& destroy crops.

Across the world — from the Seminole deep in the Everglades to Irish republicans navigating the vast but stark peatlands in Northern Ireland — bogs have sheltered those resisting conquest and assimilation.

Their seeming inhospitability is precisely what has made them protective. By repelling colonizers, they instead offer quiet resistance and the means to continue traditional livelihoods.

In Ireland, the sprawling peatlands of the North & West provided cover for those resisting British control.

During the 60s & into the Troubles, the IRA relied on the remoteness & obscurity of the bogs in N.Ireland to evade British forces, move undetected across rural borders, & conceal weapons. The bogs' soft ground, tangled undergrowth, & vast, sparsely populated stretches made ideal terrain for guerrilla tactics.

Boglands served as strongholds of Black resistance throughout American history. As African Americans fled slavery, they relied on swamps and bogs in nearly every southern state to evade slave catchers & build hidden communities.

Most famously, the Great Dismal Swamp, straddling the border between Virginia & North Carolina, hosted one of the largest known populations of maroons in the US.

The Everglades became a sanctuary for the Seminole people, offering protection in a landscape deemed uninhabitable.

After the United States acquired the territory of Florida from Spain in the early 1800s, federal efforts intensified to forcibly remove the Seminole-along with escaped African American slaves who had settled among them, later known as Black Seminoles.

For those who could navigate the treacherous terrain, bogs offered protection: dense vegetation, hidden paths, & deep, shifting ground that discouraged pursuit. For Indigenous communities, these wetlands were natural sanctuaries, places where danger became defense. In times of conflict, bogs became havens.

Once, my field partner became deeply stuck in the peat. Before I could intervene, she impatiently lurched upward and slipped out of her hip-high boots, leaving one buried. We tried for hours to extract it, but she ended up walking miles back to our car bootless.