Restoration: finding hope in a crisis

Clare here. Thank you all so much for your lovely response to my daily blog from the the Pennine Way and its moors, bogs and peatlands. I’ll get around to responding to every comment and email over the coming days. In the meantime, I thought those of you whose interest in moors, bogs and peatlands has been piqued by my accounts might like to see this quick update I have just posted on b(l)og, the bog-themed Substack I co-author with Anna Chilvers.

Well, we only blummin did it.

As in - I walked every 268 miles of the Pennine Way with my daughter, whilst Anna walked Anglesey and the Llyn Peninsula with her dog.

Today I have been mostly nursing my exceedingly sore feet whilst returning to my last Bogwise post which was written as we reached the starting point of the walk on 1st August - “Who knows what lies beyond us. Restoration, for me, has always represented hope. The sort of peat restoration I watched at Little Wooden made real to me how wrongs can be softened, how the act of repair can save not only a landscape but the people who work on it. But how do hope, and hard work, and care, stand up against walls of flame?”

We saw smoke, and the terrible, twisted aftermath of flame. Most of all, we saw - and felt and heard - the dry bogs, the empty streams, the yellowed hills, the heavy air, the crunch of dessicated sphagnum for mile after mile after mile. The tiny velvety bodies of shrews on the hardened, waterless ground.

When I got home, the little bog I keep on my windowsill - a Kilner jar of moss and sundew - was all but dry. I’ve filled it repeatedly today: each time, the moss drinks with a deep thirst and needs more, more, more. I wish i could do the same for our bogs and fens and moors.

A few hours ago, Anna and I met to finalise tomorrow morning’s Writing Bogwise workshop, which will explore how creative writing can support positive ecological practice - and how nature connectedness can restore our health and humanity. When we read from some of the articles and poems we’ll be using - Jane Clarke, Gregory Norminton, Amanda Chester - I felt like some burnt and thirsty part of myself was drinking deeply too. In this piece from The Book of Bogs, Gregory talks about planting moss plugs three weeks after the death of his father:

“We collected plastic bags full of Sphagnum from the back of the pickup, and wooden stakes with which to gouge divots into the peat. We crossed the road to a gate in the fencing that marks the edge of Burbage Moor and set off into the heather. There were vestiges of snow on the path and puddles of skim ice, and here and there, where other feet had thawed it, peat glistened, moist and black like molten chocolate cake”.

Even in this troubled, scorching summer, there were days of intense beauty on the trail. High Cup Nick, buzzards on Walshaw Moor, miles of purple heather, Great Shunner Fell, riverbanks wild with flowers, hares low in long grass. A thirsty bee revived with a drink shared from our bottle. Harbells and foxgloves and black berries, lapwing and curlew. Sunset as we approached the border. And for all the degraded bog, the bogs drained, the moors farmed and burned into a monoculture for grouse shooting, there was restoration too - miles of pathway laid to protect the peat from heavy feet, gullies blocked, moss planted, hags softened and flattened, brash spread.

There was restoration for us too in the rhythm of the trail, the brain finally finding peace in the walk’s repetition, in its small acts of friendship and kindness - honesty boxes and tuck shops, a flask of iced water left out in a garden; an invitation to sit. A scribbled note on a bothy wall - “don’t give up”.

Join us tomorrow online from 10-12 to explore - in poetry, articles and stories - how we can support the restoration of peatland, and how peatland in turn can restore us. Can’t make it? Don’t worry - the live session is recorded and you’ll be sent a link. Can’t afford it? Give me a shout: we offer bursaries of up to 90%. Click here to book.