To wallow is the rolling and trampling motion performed by buffalo, water buffalo, and bison that disturbs soil in order to engage with skin-protecting dust, parasite-feeding birds, buffalo-traveling frogs, or dung-eating arthropods. A wallow is also the name given to the pools —formed by the act of wallow-ing— that water buffalo submerge themselves in.

In Istanbul’s post-industrial periphery, a wallow begins life as a rain-filled pit. A water buffalo—a keystone species in wetland regeneration—gently rolls into its mud, the cool surface helping to bring down her body temperature. With her shifting weight, the pool enlarges and becomes deeper. Her hide hosts a party of microorganisms that cause birds to arrive—their feet and feathers carrying fish eggs from other waters, seeding new life into the wallow with every landing. A pair of herons stands at the water’s edge, darting forward to pick beetles from the churned mud, while, deeper still, worms and burrowing larvae build their lives between the buffalo’s footprints, each depression holding its own damp microclimate. Frogs cling to the buffalo’s legs. On the water’s surface, threads of algae drift like smoke, feeding clouds of minute creatures and soil microorganisms that work to turn decay into new life. The wallow is ringed by tall reeds that provide shade for the fisher who comes to feed from her waters. The buffalo feasts on the reeds, ensuring enough space and nutrients remain for other wetland flora to flourish. As she walks from one wallow to the next, the paths she channels through the mud connect isolated pools with one another. By carrying seeds, invertebrates, and fish eggs through these channels in her fur and hooves, the buffalo links fragmented wetland areas, fostering the spread of life across this damaged landscape.

Muddy ground is difficult to delineate and parcel for sale; the pools persist in land deemed “useless” or “unproductive” in the fringes of the metropolis. The wallow is the capitalist ruin mutated and re-formed. In Istanbul’s post-industrial periphery, a wallow may begin its life as a disused mining pit with its underground mineral deposits exhausted. Over the seasons, it becomes its own universe.