A short bicycle ride from my studio in Jolicure New Brunswick, nestled between the Transcanada Highway and the High Marsh Road is a 400-hectare landscape referred locally as the Sunken Island Bog. The reference to sunken is because the area is below the level of the marsh and sea level. During the course of the Saxby Gale of October 4th and 5th 1869, the Sunken Island Bog was reported to have been covered with haystacks, fence material, telegraph poles, gates, boards and other articles used by farmers on the marsh. Surrounded by a ring of Black Spruce and Larch trees it is a habitat for Black Bears, Whitetail Deer, Coyotes and other small mammals of the Tantramar.
Human activity is at a minimal because it is largely a floating bed of moss vegetation on top of water and marsh mud. Those who venture there may in danger of sinking through the spongy surface and drowning. When I visited my partner Gay Hansen would warn me to carry my tripod sideways, so in the event of my falling through, I would have a “lifeline”.
It is an ideal habitat for Sarraceniaceae or New World Pitcher Plants which are not in my experience found in great numbers anywhere else on the Tantramar Marsh.
During COVID isolation times I rediscovered the Sunken Island Bog as a place of solitude and exploration. Over the course of numerous visits in spring, summer and fall, I collected a variety of these plants, some live, others old and dried… skeletons of their former selves. They all wore the patina of life and death.
Organic and erotic — all at the same time.
Thaddeus Holownia
2021
