When you run on the bog, you can navigate with colours. The red surface will carry you. The yellow might do the same but you can’t be sure. The black will swallow you. If you keep still and stand straight in the black muddy peat, you’ll sink until only your shoulders and head will be above it. Let this environment exhaust us. Exhaust the physical body and the rational mind to the point where you may start to feel the melting of yourself into this bog; into its’ soft and gentle touch, its existence.

In Holding Space with Peat, the participants were instructed to running in the peat, exhausting their physical self by the environment and then, guided to the inter-species communication with the peatland, as a holistic immersion. Holding Space with Peat is a rare celebration as it takes the two years from the mire to recover to the state where it was before running and the participants are informed of this. Similarly, it is asked: how rare should be flying to another country or mining deep under ground?

Holding Space with Peat was a part of Earth Observation Source Workshop in Hyytiälä Forest Research Station 3.-5.9.2017. It was conducted in close by Siikaneva. Thank you for the organisers Martin Howse, Jamie Allen and Ulla Taipale & participants both human and more-than-human.

Video available here https://vimeo.com/335147064