COLLEEN IVERSEN is talking to a tube. "Oh, you'll go in," she tells it. Dressed in a neon orange vest, khaki trousers and rubber boots that are ankle-deep in squelchy muck, she is pushing a wire mesh cylinder into a bog. Ignoring the mosquitoes that swarm around her face, Iversen leans her weight against the tube and gives it one more shove. Shlump! It is swallowed up, and there it will remain for the growing season until Iversen returns to collect a sample of new-grown roots and sludge.
This is not your average bog. Nestled in a crook of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota, the watery landscape pierced with black spruce trees has been divided into 17 octagonal plots, each covering about 12 square metres and linked by aluminium boardwalks that can support a jeep. Workers are constructing glass chambers around each plot, creating a system of open greenhouses ...
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