Deep Water ~ A Delicate Empiricism of Sharpham Marsh
By Shannon Welles
This book is inspired by delicate empiricism, Goethe’s method of observation, and follows its flow. First impressions of the marsh lead to sensory descriptions, then to exploring relationality, time, and process, then to participating internally and expressing gestures, and finally to intuitively grasping the essence of the place.
Spotted through the trees
golden light, holding breath
How do I get there?
A gate, a path, feet sinking into mud
A long-faded sign
‘Deep water and rising tides’
Access granted by the moon, perhaps
No smell of the sea today
Faint breeze, reeds swish
seedheads dry as paper
Wings in flight cut the air
while winter sun hangs low
Layers in the landscape whisper traces of becoming.
Sharpham Marsh, a place between river and sea, I am listening to your story.
Nested on the banks of the River Dart, in Totnes, Devon, UK.
An edge place, a place in particular, a place in dynamic flow. Permeable boundaries.
Saltwater sinks under fresh; brackish tumbles in the tidal mix.
Swirling gas, silent nebula.
A deep time story of the marsh begins
5 billion years ago when all was stardust.
Molten mantle, plate tectonics.
400 million years ago, the future marsh lay below the sea, south of the equator. The Devon region emerged from a long, dynamic dance of earth and water.
Roaring water, fractured land.
200,000-450,00 years ago, two massive floods carved and filled a great channel.
Over time, rising seas created islands from a continent.
Crushing weight, flowing ice.
27,000 years ago, a massive glacial ice sheet covered much of the island. The Devon region lay outside the zone of ice.
Dripping ice, rushing sea.
Glacial melt drowned the river valley, forming the River Dart estuary seen today.
Who is here?
Adaptable, vigorous.
Phragmites, the common reed, dominates. Its rhizomes push boundaries. Fresh water enters from streams; saltwater flows with tides.
Crow, Gull, Goose, Rat, Cormorant, Pigeon, Buzzard. Songbirds in Oak. Too soon for migratory
birds. Squirrel. Birch, Fern, Ivy. Cow along the edge. Sheep on the hill. Human.
Beings flow through this place like water.
Saltwater meets fresh.
Seaweed, Mud, Silt, Stone
Diatom, Worm, Bacteria
Present, even if invisible.
Tidelines mark the rhythms of Moon. Shifting boundaries.
Twice a day, Salt creeps upstream, falls back to Sea.
Imperceptible boundaries.
What’s on the hill will run to River.
Marsh will capture, collect, filter, cleanse.
Blue Carbon
Sediment, soil, mud, detritus.
Collect, confine, submerge, sequester.
Deep soils, deep water
Deep time carbon storage.
