“ …How often on a march, when embarrassed with mountains, bogs and rivers, have I heard the bravest among you exclaim, ‘When shall we descry the enemy? when shall we be led into the field of battle?” Tacitus ‘Agricola’

 

“…Twice I lost my way, and I had some nasty falls into peat-bogs. I had only about ten miles to go as the crow flies, but my mistakes made it nearer twenty. The last bit was completed with set teeth and a very light dizzy head. But I managed it, and in the early dawn I was knocking at Mr. Turnbull’s door. The mist lay close and thick, and from the cottage I could not see the highroad.
Mr. Turnbull himself opened to me- sober and something more than sober. He was primly dressed in an ancient but well-tended suit of black; he had been shaved not later than the night before; he wore a linen collar; and in his left hand he carried a pocket Bible. At first he did not recognise me.
“Whae are ye that comes stravaigin’ here on the Sabbath mornin’?” he asked.

Polygon, Edinburgh 2011 isbn 9781846971983

On the Goethe Moor in the Harz mountains of Germany peat was cut to provide fuel for smelting ore when local miners had felled all the trees and timber was used up. Later a railway line was cut through the peat to take tourists to the top of the Brocken mountain, made popular by Goethe’s writings on nature.

‘Great Piece of Turf’, Albrecht Durer. The Albertina, Vienna.

Islay peat moss.

“Tell us more about the bog people, mum.” Happy Mother’s Day, Pam.

Witch’s cursing bone with bog wood, Glen Shira, Argyll.

Queen: Lewis chess piece.

Out on the moor the tiny sphagnum mosses clone themselves. They have created a world favourable to their own survival on layer upon layer of their former selves. Outside the croft the peat stack remains the same despite the annual construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. People also endure. Mary cutting peat on her ancestors’ traditional bank, Island of Lewis. #IWD

Peat stacked.

“Am Ah tae pit it thru ra books, Jim, orz this joab a casher?”