A tired swamp.

"Blue flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns. Man, this would be so much easier if I wasn't COLOR-BLIND!"

-Donkey, Shrek (2002) - while seeking a specific flower.

How a swamp gets tired.

Note: vernal pool

Do you know how an ogre is like an onion, in that they have layers?

Turns out, a bunch of things take the same shape - many masks for the same face. From storytelling to teaching, shading to grading, the concept of layering feathers its way in. We can even find it in our names.

A swamp gets tired when a long line of people in a row get tired, or overhwelmed, or when the system does that. Or causes that. There are layers to this idea. It's very complex. You likely intuit it better than I can over-explain it. I'll give it a shot anyway, for my ego's sake. Note any mistakes.

How to split a swamp.

Envision some guy, or some she or some they, in deeper than all three of their heads in ecological slowdowns and economical log-jams. With the odds as stacked against them as the river's dam was wide, our now-ghostly ogres once dreamt to aspire. Their lives swept aside by an industry expired, these layered layers laid tires in lairs.

What happens next is precise - like splitting hair. As tires age and degrade, they begin to pollute. Microplastics and metals bleed down through the Earth and up into you. Have you ever experienced your own toxic loop? I don't have to tap into atoms to know that noxious exchange does the opposite of what a walk and one sliced apple a day may do for you.

As water seeps through, those toxins leach in. They seed and they bleed. You don't need me to teach; you can see where that leads. If untreated, from deep-rooted trees and untreaded greens beside an old stream with some reeds - to muck pooled like pus, all stinking and mean.

It's not only water which gets trapped in this sauna - these tires mirror hoof-footed mooers in moving out methane. Only instead of manure, for this maneuver we'll use swamp stank instead. Synthetic rubbers are sort of like flammable gases which have been temporarily pressured into shaky stability. Have you seen that pattern expressed elsewhere?

As if the stakes needed raising, these hoofless movers' leftover shoe pit's changed the landscape through its carbon footprint, just to prove it could do it. Methane and swamp stank, water and muck, what more could these tires want, but a blueprint? Only the sun. They hold onto it tight - and in them it excites a long-linking chain which aspires to bring light, but instead just ignites.

That got real dark. Remember those hairs - and what color their roots. I would not dare to split these entangling frayed ends, only give them a part.

How to re-tire a swamp.

When I picture green pastures and still waters to boot, the image of ancient tires stagnating a stream into a steam swamp does not spring lightfooted to mind.

In an effort to protect against the rise of the stagnant swamp and mosquito overlord timeline, I have gently re-tired this space. I have done so with care to seed micro-habitats for small animals, brace trees and their root systems, mitigate further erosion, and facilitate air and water flows, instead of blocking them.

There sit those tires, once discarded like boots - some now worn like shoes. Some even work in cahoots with the trees and the bees. I call those active re-tirees.

I will return later to take video of what changes I have done. The purpose of this post, aside from dancing around lyrically, is to set the scene for transformation. This is the "Before". When working in harmony with nature and its cycles, a great many bountiful "Afters' exist. If you are capable of envisioning a better future, you are capable of taking a small step each day toward alchemizing a piece of that future.

If you haven't already, go see the visual companion for this post! Much of the content from here is meant to synergize with what you can find there.