For a few days in Maine I only had the opportunity to go exploring on my own just one time for a few hours at a nearby Nature Conservancy property, the Saco Heath Bog Preserve. It was a lovely break away from being peopled-out at a conference nearby. The boardwalk and woodland trail out-and-back is about a mile and a half, not a very long hike but rather, instead, a slow ramble to enjoy being back to place I'd never been to before.
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Pitch Pine forest gaining ground near the forest edge
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| Encroaching woodland into the bog edge |
The name for heath bog is a tad repetitive as the word heath when you trace it to Old and Middle English (heethe), Dutch (heide), German (Heide) basically means wet moorland, while bog from old Gaelic (bheug), Middle English (bog), Old Norse (bok) all mean a tussocky, sinking, wet/waste place. This 12,000 year-old glacial-formed joined double pond (coalesced) meets all the ancient definitions from hilly tussocks to untillable land (moor).
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| Old tussocks become anchor sites for trees |
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| Mid-pond forest is floating over water |
My fondness for bogs stems from both my love for natural history and for anthropology. The natural history is self-explanatory - I've always loved the unique living landscapes of the North and getting to know the unique plant and animal communities found in all manner of northern lands. But from as long as I can remember I have always held a fascination for bogs as living time capsules, that with water chemistry, cold temperatures, and extremely slow rates of decomposition may hold animal, plant, even human remains in near perfect condition for thousands of years.
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| Long's Bulrush - this patch is over 100 years old |
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| Larch or Tamarack - a deciduous conifer |
I wasn't looking for Wooly Mammoths or Bog Men today, but I did enjoy meeting a new (for me) rare bog plant, Long's Bulrush (Scirpus longii). Noted as globally rare, this bulrush prefers peaty wetlands and is fire dependent. Where fires don't occasionally burn over moorlands, this plant is rapidly done in by invasive grasses or more aggressive heath plants. I also enjoyed spending some time with an old favorite, American Larch or Tamarack (Larix laricina) whose tight clusters of short deep green needles will turn brilliant yellow and burnt orange in autumn then shed for winter like a deciduous Maple or Birch.
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| Pitch Pine surrounded by Cotton Grass and Leatherleaf (heath) |
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| It's what underneath, tho. |
The whole of the open bog is suspended above water. Heath plants and trees root into the organic peats and run laterally across the domes of built-up peat layers to form floating forests. In places where peatlands and bogs are commonplace in the landscape, one can find the cultural adornments of story and legend that surround them. Nearly all the boggy places of my ancestors time in England, Ireland, and Scotland have stories of travellers who, unknowledgeable about such things as quaking and sinking bogs, have been lost to their black depths, and these stories which may be true, gave rise to whole collections of ghostly sightings, eerie and inviting sounds of children playing, and strange paths lighting up in the moorland nights that lead to the lost and lonely drowned.
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| Island path |
Maybe one reason I find bogs so appealing is how they feel familiar, like a sunken homeland buried in ancestral strands of recovered memory. Even so, the botanist in me combs through each linear stretch of path for species I recognize unique to bogs. There are plants that only grow in these places and plants that have adapted to a wide range of places to include the challenging growing acidic conditions of bogs. Cottongrass waves ivory tufted above the Sheep Laurel and Leatherleaf while Indian Cucumber-root flickers its last bright green flame of the summer beneath the deep shade of Hemlock, Birch, Oak, and Pine.
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| Indian Cucumber-root, Medeola virginiana |
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| Atlantic White Cedar, Chamaecyparis thyoides |
I reached the edge of a wooded island growing as any other stand of woods though not rooted down but out. Lateral roots make the path a bit tricky. I watched my footing, especially in the places where cross-crossed networks of thick roots held water in bowls and sinks. At the very rim of the island I found a fringe of Atlantic White Cedar, a tree that by its very presence indicates water below and beyond. Intolerant of drought, this survivor patch of dense cedar stands almost defiant against what may come, having made it through increasingly warm and droughty springs and hot summer seasons (so far) as well as historic periods of intense logging for this valuable wood when almost every last shred of cedar was taken. Then there was a sign "Do Not Procede, Keep Out!" stuck right out in the niddle of the heath and it marred the view of the bog beyond. A signal, I thought as I checked the time. I turned back and faced the fact I had to return to the conference after all.
Notes:
Because its rhizomes grow and spread in datable concentric circles like that of a tree, Long's Bulrush can be aged by its rings. The patch found at Sacoo Heath Bog is over 100 years old.
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