WV Monongahela National Forest: Cranberry Glades Botanical Area

Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, Oct 7, 2025

Cell phones don't work here. Most electromagnetic devices won't work here, honestly. We're on the edge of the Quiet Zone, a huge chunk of the Monongahela National Forest that is radio silent (or tries to be) in order to protect the Green Bank Radio-Telescope and a nearby intelligence agency facility. But even without the National Radio Quiet Zone this high, cold, wet bowl valley of bogs and surrounded by isolated mountains seemed disconnected from just about everything anyway. 

Cranberry Glades Botanical Area

Access to the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area is via a boardwalk loop trail which was breathtakingly beautiful. I was escorted by a pair of American Woodcock for a short way as they walked along the shadow of the boardwalk investigating the mucky leaf litter for tasty worms and bugs. They seemed completely unfazed by my presence and allowed me to watch their bob-walking away into the alder thicket. Beaver activity was all around one section of the boardwalk which Amos the Coonhound found enticing as he checked out their wet paw prints on the wood and recently mounded mud piles for scent marking.  I watched a small school of Appalachian Pearl Dace swim against a gentle current as the boardwalk bridged a small creek. Several big Eastern rivers claim this valley as headwaters and I wondered how the stream's waters would travel by which river to the sea. 

With the government shut-down and the Cranberry Glades Visitor Center closed, there were no people on the boardwalk the entire two hours I sat out there sketching and studying the ecosystem.  Green Darner Dragonflies were droning around the bog catching flying insects on the wing as they migrated south to the Gulf of Mexico. Red Spruce laden with small red cones were hopping with birds, also feeding heavily to fuel their migration journey. I had a particularly close encounter with a Blackpoll Warbler who was also totally okay with my presence. He picked every tiny bug off one spruce bough then moved a step higher to do the same, spiraling around the tree so as not to miss a single morsel. 

Boardwalk at CGBA

Speaking of morsels, as I stood sketching the Woodcock I kept seeing what I thought were snowflakes, but it was too warm! I turned around and saw this mass of Woolly Alder Aphids clinging to a crook in an Alder limb. Every time the cold breeze powered through a few of them would get peeled off and float around on their feathery plumes, thus creating the "snow." They seemed to wave goodbye as I ventured further down the boardwalk. 

Woolly Alder Aphid

I had the time that day to do the long day hike around the bog system on the Cowpasture Trail but I couldn't tear myself away from this wonderful place. I'll save that experience for another post, however. In the meantime I was bathing in the silence and serenity of the place, able to detect without distraction, the smallest movements of animals probing for food - a salamander on the muddy edge of the stream, tiny wood warblers sneaking through the trees. The quiet wind through the Cotton Grass made the entire valley bob and wave with little white moppet tops. 

Though the boardwalk is only a mile long, I went around again. This time I noticed the blaze of Winter Berry fruits that I'd missed while watching the Woodcocks. I loved how the wild Cranberry ran amok here, there, everywhere on the floor of the bog and Northern Pitcher Plants poked up through it. 

Winter Berry, Ilex verticillata

Partridge Berry, Mitchella repens 

Cold-hardy plants included the prostrate woody vine, Partridge Berry.  Found as far north as the boreal forests of Ontario and Quebec surrounding the great northern Hudson Bay, this tough plant can endure the coldest of winters. Close together pairs of white waxy flowers blossom even as the last of the winter's snow and ice are still on the ground, luring cold hardy bumble bees to some of the earliest nectar and pollen resources of the year. Once pollinated the two seed forming ovaries merge to create a double berry. 

Ancient Red Spruce

Along the boardwalk entry path - as I finally decided to leave and start the second hike of the day - I encountered a cold pocket of old spruce forest carpeted with moss and draped with lichens. The ancient Red Spruce were relics of an earlier time and survivors of the logging boom that stripped much of West Virginia's spruce forests off the mountain ridges and slopes. Protected by the deep peat soils and boulder-strewn terrane these trees occupied a throwback to the Pleistocene, a cold, harsh landscape so harsh and inhospitable to people. For a decade now there have been efforts to restore the Red Spruce forest across the Allegheny mountain range - the main reason for my trip to the Monongahela this year as a volunteer tree planter on a project site not far from here.  

* Sketches were started on site and finished when I returned home. They did not look like this when I was walking off the boardwalk, very rough indeed! I do take reference photographs to use later and I  format my pages on site and usually get as far as layering colored pencil and watercolors on to preliminary sketches. When the light changes I move. No, I did not see a Wooly Mammoth but it being my favorite extinct animal I can do his portrait pretty well anywhere, especially in relic Pleistocene habitats like these excellent high bogs and cold forests in the Mon.

Notes:

Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia (USFS)

West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest: 40 Spectacular Hikes in the Allegheny Mountains (2022)