This book was... something. Between the emotionally heated ranting in the first half of the book, the dreamy recollections of swamp life in the middle, and the absolute lack of emotion in the end... there's also long tirades of random facts that are wetlands-adjacent... like the enormous section about Bog People... information on the anthropology of ancient Romans... bits on feminism -- ok, it's just all over the place.

I think, in all, there might've been more information about the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest, the how's, the why's, the motivations, than there is about wetland destruction (summed up: people hate malaria and being unable to control nature so they drain it and farm it. Sometimes make snide remarks about colonial era excess hunting. Repeat this for the rest of the book).

This is my first time reading anything by Annie Proulx and I feel like this is possibly the worst introduction to her writing, ever. I'm going to read her older fiction, but if she has/writes more nonfiction, I'm going to steer well clear of it lol. The inability to just... stay on TOPIC - it killed me.