Soapbox : the swamped

Swamps inflect the imagination at every turn. As an ecological transition zone, the swamp is where water and land merge and lose their hard distinction. As a historical site, the swamp is often cleared, drained, or overcome in the name of progress. In political rhetoric, the swamp still figures as a threat to national identity. Yet, in folklore and narrative around the globe, swamps are where one escapes to when there is nowhere else to go. Sometimes, then, swamps act as a sanctuary for the fugitive or the outcasted. And all the while swamps enter us.