Bog Blog

In Plymouth, NH, a roadside sign invites you to visit the “Quincy Bog Natural Area.”  After passing this sign many times over the past eight years and always picturing the cranberry bogs of Cape Cod, I finally ventured to check it out this past spring. 

I found that the Quincy Bog, actually located in Rumney, NH, is a natural, pond-like area with well-maintained trails. It is where a friend pointed out a salamander here and there – the first one I’ve ever actually seen, at least up so close.

It is where, the day Hurricane Earl swept through New England, I completed the one-mile trail with growing excitement.  Remnants of storm clouds, white puffy clouds, and streaks of white, black and blue, mixed with purple from the late afternoon sun across the sky. This, combined with the numerous trees and grasses growing in the water, and the trees around the edge provided great photo ops. The sun, as if renewed, danced across the effervescent water, erasing any signs that a hurricane had passed through less than 12 hours before. Awesome adventure!

Many animal tracks were embedded in the marshy, muck areas.  My friend quietly wondered, “wouldn’t it be cool to see whatever left the tracks … we have to come back at dusk to see whatever bounds down these paths.”  City girl that I am, I secretly wished my friend would stop wishing for such things. I have no need to see the animal that left the large tracks with claw marks bounding across my path.

It quickly became evident that I would need to visit this best-kept secret seasonally.  Two friends and I visited again this past Columbus Day Weekend.   It was a balmy day with a light breeze to keep you cool, perfect for hiking. Weeks of blustery days had removed many leaves in various states of changing over, subduing the eye-popping brilliance of the earlier fall. Still, there remained a vibrancy, not just to the colors of the leaves that remained, but to the whole area. We could hear living things scurrying about in the fallen leaves with what seemed a focused urgency to get whatever they were doing, done.  We “city folk” would call it getting ready for winter.  For all I really know, it is their normal routine, done 25 times a day, 365 days a year.  Geese fed and swam gracefully in the water, then moved into formation and slowly crept, or even completely stopped, when they sensed danger, a danger we couldn’t see. No doubt one of the many beavers also moving along readying for winter.  

At one point, my friends – the outdoorsy types –paused in the middle of the trail, trying to find something that had piqued their interest. I realized from their hand signals that they were listening to a knocking that they believed was a  woodpecker.  When I mumbled, “it’s the trees,” they ignored me. After 15 minutes of standing, staring, and listening intently for this alleged pileated woodpecker, my friends almost simultaneously stated, “Oh, it’s that tree bending against the other one in the wind.”  Hmm, City Girl isn’t so dumb.

That day, the bog held a beauty my camera could not fully capture. In fact, this natural area called a bog provides me a place I can go to regularly and be outdoors, really outdoors, without too many worries, maybe a garter snake here, a few animal tracks there.  I have the sense that this one-mile loop will not become boring even after numerous visits, that each visit will bring a new and different experience.

What a shame that the word “bog” kept me away from this wonderland for eight long years.
 
Dictionary.com begins to define a bog as wet, spongy ground.  These are the very same words it uses as it begins to define a swamp.  This is where I get a little uneasy.  I have, after all, just spent several afternoons trudging around a “bog” only to learn what separates a bog from a swamp is soil composition, a certain tree and/or vegetation.

Public relations or spin is everything, isn’t it?  Take the Florida Everglades. They don’t call it the Florida Swamp, but by definition or to look at it, it could be. Or even a bayou sounds better. Certainly Linda Ronstadt singing I’m coming back someday, come what may, you Blue Bayou is way better than singing Blue by a Swamp.

Are we so stuck in word association that it doesn’t matter what it means?  Did you know that Antarctica by definition is a desert?  If it just sounds like something we don’t want to see, taste or hear, we can miss out on something wonderful. 

I am learning with this outdoor stuff some of the same lessons I learned growing up in the city, especially at suppertime – keep your mind open and at least give it a try.

Antarctica, anyone?