ABOUT PEATLANDS
A dark mass of vital matter; biodiverse reservoirs on the planet
Peatlands are an interface, an intermediate place between the aquatic and terrestrial worlds.
According to Hinsby Cadillo Quiroz (Associate professor at the School of Life Sciences of Arizona State University), peatlands are an intermediate place the present and the ancestral, the ever evolving ecological changing system, and the more stable systems of the past. Where water and earth meet, the peatlands form through minerals and fossil vegetation.
Boreal, tropical and austral, they interconnect an extensive and ancestral network of matter and energy, fundamental to life on Earth.
They are great at retaining carbon dioxide, just like their relative ecosystems, the forests. We humans dwell on Earth, and it is our duty to learn from it for our existence in the cosmos.
They can be seen as the axis mundis: a nuptial network in the wheel that connects sky and the land.
Since much has been left unknown, or rather, left on the future agenda of the western capitalist regime, they’ve been left at the edge of what is known. A no-place: an unnamed space. However, in many areas of the globe, peatlands provide food and sustainance to local and regional, human and non-human ecological economies.
They also store valuable ecologic, scientific, and archaeological information: such as pollen registers and ancient human-made tools.
A sensorial journey through the peatland canals reveals geography decoded through the magic of ancient wisdom, the metaphysical, a vibrant composition of earth submerged in the darkness.
The peatlands will always be mysterious, however, there are different ways through which we can access their labyrinth of stories.
The breath of life is the same for the peatlands and humankind alike; a life force that allows us to coexist with all the other mpanion species on Earth—including stones, mountains, and volcanos too. The peatlands hold the secrets of the planet, our ancestors, and of time immemorial.
In the absence of light, deep within, all the elements are kept there like a treasure; a black hole that transports us to another time-space and teaches us of the past and the future all at once. Mirroring the sky.
Take a peek into their atmosphere, and get to know the different beings and communities that inhabit it.
A sensorial landscape that is composed of fossils and stories, images and narratives. This is a metaphysical journey through the labyrinth of the peatlands
The dark planetary mass of cosmic matter that gives us life is a black network of sorts, like compost or hummus. An elixir, a creative spark, a source of life; it holds the memories of time.. The peatland also creates the atmosphere in which it lives and the air with which it breathes.
They are portals to an underground world on Earth, creating timeless networks.
In the darkness of its soil, water and mud folds and allows us to behold eras of the history of the planet. Today, we still don’t know how many peatlands exist on Earth, but we do know about the ones that exist near the poles and the larger tropical ones in Eastern Asia, South America and Africa.
A source of life for the communities that inhabit it. They are connectors, portals to an underground world on Earth, where there is no time.
Within this labyrinth of dark matter, ecological relationships fall into play. The experience is multidimensional, like a polyhedra. It connects different worlds. Several universes exist within the peatlands
Like all portals, they have their own guardians that bring awareness to the nature of body-space and human-nonhuman relationships. They teach us to perceive the unseen and to foresee how we are interconnected and touched by all beings.