I'm listening to some old bluegrass with fiddles while I research swamps. Historically they have often been seen as places of stagnation, disease, and death. They are home to ghosts and spirits. In Aboriginal culture they are considered to be a womb of life and a home to unborn souls. Far from being sources of disease and death swamp water has many healing properties. The moss, plant life and rich mineral content in the water are great sources of nutrients to the body. Henry Thoreau discovered this and spent a lot of time wallowing around in swamps.He also recommended swimming in a swamp as a cure for melancholy and depression.

"My temple is the swamp. When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen, the most dismal, swamp. I enter the swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum, a sanctorum."

He also writes of the swamp as the first birth place of nature.

"That central meadow and pool in Gowing's swamp is it's very navel, omphalos, where the umbilical chord was cut that bound creation to its womb. Methinks that every swamp tends to have or suggests such an interior tender spot. The sphagnous crust that surrounds the pool is pliant and quaking, like the skin or muscles of the abdomen: you seem to be slumping into the very bowels of the swamp. The surface of the swamp is the soft spot of nature, even the breast of Mother Nature. The soft center of the swamp is also related to the human body. The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life"

I plan to dance in the swamp more often.