Our property does not quite aspire to having a waterfront, but it is fronted by wetlands. This special area, as unique as if borrowed from elsewhere, comprises a multiplicity of overlapping ecosystems, rich in diversity, each determined to pursue its own agenda.
Like all wetlands, ours is covered by shallow water for several months a year. The soil and the organic materials beneath are saturated, while the covering water seals off the oxygen supply to the decaying plant and animal matter below. This anaerobic decay, plus inorganic carbonate minerals, can deposit over time vast quantities of carbon.
The carbon capture by wetlands is estimated to exceed twenty times the carbon accumulation in a forest of equal area. It was the first step in the formation of the fossil fuels we use today and explains the critical role of our current treatment of wetlands in the world’s struggle to limit global warming.
We are fortunate that our wetland has an optimal hydrology, resulting in an abundance of wild botanicals, including the colorful, dominant joe-pye weeds, beloved by hummingbirds and butterflies. We had planned on using a few sprigs of the pale, blended purple flowers to grace the dining room table but then realized that they were taken over by swarms of hardworking honeybees. How can such a useful plant have been named a weed? We also have membracids, leaf beetles, and at least four types of gnats—all threads of interwoven food chains that show us, to some extent, the way the land looked before agricultural and housing development.
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Since Neolithic times, wetlands have been the setting or the cause of war. Agriculturists came with schemes to convert wetland to dry land; engineers wanted to build roads, wind pumps, channels, and dikes. All threatened to disrupt the ancient lifestyle of the indigenous wetland dwellers, who resisted the intruders. Now, wetlands are a battlefield in the most consequential of all wars, between those pursuing the burning of carbon-based fuels as a way of life and those seeking to reduce greenhouse gases.
Uncountable insects and small wildlife recognize the great value of wetlands. However, of all species, humans should be the most appreciative of their irreplaceable contribution to climate control.
In pre-industrial times, wetlands had an effective self-defense mechanism: Even if the surface water is drained away, the remaining crust of matted fibers is a poor load bearer. To be useful for building or for agriculture, extensive soil and fibrous material would have to be removed, which often persuaded developers to do their digging elsewhere.
As mankind’s continuing increase in population has put wetlands and other natural areas under attack, their conservation now falls to governmental initiatives and citizen idealists. Ours comes under the protection of the Michigan Department of the Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, and it is thanks to EGLE and similar offices that the earth has not yet become coated in a featureless concrete sheath. Even in cases where such requirements are mild, they are often enough to supplement the ancient problem of poor load bearing to preserve a wetland, even in a suburban setting like ours.
Our small acre offers no significant countermeasure to the world’s massive release of greenhouse gasses. However, it might make a nice war memorial, or rather a peace memorial, since wars should not be memorialized while still in progress. Our plot conveys peace, at least if one zooms out to take the landscape view and disregards the countless ongoing conflicts at the microscopic level.
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An isolated wetland among well-groomed gardens and artistic landscaping plays the same role as a watering hole in an arid land: It is where the various roaming fauna congregate to check out what other locals are up to and what the wetland has to offer.
In this way, we became aware of a family of wild turkeys, thanks mainly to the extensive range of victuals available in our wetland. Early in the year the family takes its stroll in single file, making it easy to count them. As I write we have ten, including the new poults, cute and confused.
The omnivorous turkeys are content to dine at our natural smorgasbord, and I find it reassuring to be sharing a place with such choosy critics: We experience the satisfaction of a restaurateur whose appreciative clientele keeps coming back. When the turkeys take their stroll, they convey distinctively bourgeois satisfaction: a large family that dines well.
By late summer, the members of different generations are no longer easily distinguished by size, but the more senior members have a prideful, ponderous gait as though they feel obliged to strut their stuff to impress anyone who may be watching. Nothing is more natural than a parent’s pride in a numerous and physically well-developed ensuing generation. The junior members, now each developed into a twenty-pound bird with personality, can scarcely contain their pleasure at the daily romp through the wetland, with alternating phases of exploration and foraging.
One year, one of the poults mistook the lawn outside our kitchen window for a runway and decided it was the right place and right time for the first test flight. It was as if the clearance signal came from somewhere, and the open terrain stretching out ahead appealed irresistibly.
The lightly colored legs were set pumping like pistons. The bundle of energy, as it opened full throttle, reached out for air, embracing great scoopfuls with an overpowering insistence. So much was at stake: to escape to the air when threatened, or a short life as the target of earthbound predators. Faster, faster, flap, flap. And, remarkably, at that point when conditions were just right, all twenty pounds became airborne.
We dispelled our momentary disbelief and cheered.
