FOUR AND A HALF THOUSAND YEARS DEEP
2023
This work was the result of a residency organised and supported by the Crichton Carbon Center (CCC), on a peat bog leased by the Upper Urr Environment Trust (UUET), near Corsock in Dumfries and Galloway.
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Supported by CCC I was working alongside the Peatland Connections Project where the research team at CCC shared their work, and sites of interest with artists who would build on their findings using their practice.
This residency was an intense and deeply moving period of time discovering the unique environment that is a peatland bog. Learning about these places and their actions to store and hold information was starkly contrasted by the surrounding and constant reminders of the precarious situation we have put these vital habitats in. From historic drainage ditches to recent timber forest planting, these sites are under threat from the affects of human intervention at every angle.
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It was a pleasure to be able to draw this site ahead of exciting regenerative work being undertaken by the Peatland Connections team at CCC.
My first day on the bog was interesting, and reversed a lot of my preconceived ideas of what I was going to find. I was joined by Peatlands Project officer Lewis Robertson and Peatlands Connections officer Kerry Morrison so that I could learn how to read this landscape, keep myself safe and get a few pointers on the parts of the site most of interest. I must admit, I was slightly nervous of the bog, with its reputation alluding to a fowl smelling, desolate and dangerous landscape that closely aligns itself with death, the decaying and a fear of sinking quickly through the ground never to be discovered. I quickly found that this place was full of life from insects, birds and small mammals to a plethora of plants that filled the landscape with vivid colour of bright greens to lurid oranges, duller umbers, dusky mauves and pink mists that were, much to my surprise, accompanied by sweet, heady fragrances.
We journeyed out into the middle of the bog where Lewis began explaining how peatlands form, are maintained and are monitored. Using a peat probe, we measured the depth of the bog, which started at about 50cm close to the grassy edges, but quickly got deeper as we moved into the centre until we felt the crackling of gravel 4 and a half meters below our feet through the handle of the probe. This is deep enough to cover a double decker bus. This part of the bog was 4,500 years old, a thousand years for every meter down.
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This is literal deep mapped time, preserving in layers a landscape that has been changed and withstood the modifications of human activity, but now presents its history through its own language. My aims of drawing this site, on foot and with pencil, are to become aware of the ways it is talking to us and interpret the languages it uses, to understand what it is telling us about its past and how to negotiate it in the present.