Boreal Bog

There are some who believe that the quality of our relationship with nature is profoundly important to our well-being. This hit home as I sat on the boardwalk that winds through the Cranberry Glades, a bog environment in the Monongahela National Forest.

The ecosystem of the Glades formed more than 10,000 years ago. On our continent, it is the southernmost occurrence of a habitat associated with the arctic tundra. Retreating from the glaciers of the Pleistocene Era, northern plant species moved southward.

While the glaciers did not quite reach the latitude of Cranberry Glades, those species migrated just further enough to settle in a welcoming spot--a bowl encircled by ridges at a 3400 foot elevation in what is now known as the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia. The topography funnels water from rain and snow to form the bog. Cold air flowing down the slopes helps maintain the microclimate that keeps these species happy.
One need not travel to the rainforest to get a biodiversity thrill. An intact bog is full of marvelous and beautiful plants adapted to the acidic conditions.
John Eastman, writes in The Book of Swamp and Bog that experiencing a bog "may bring us as close to encountering true American wilderness as most of us will ever come." Eastman is an impeccable observer and researcher but also reverent. He comments that "experiencing the richness and complexity of wetlands cannot fail to revive and nourish one's own sense of wholeness to a degree beyond common expectation."

I had not yet read Eastman as I sat on the boardwalk. For the last hour time had been suspended as my friend and I wandered in awe through a botanical cornucopia. I photographed plants that I had never seen like pink orchids, cranberries, cotton grass, and carnivorous sundews and pitcher plants. Once or twice I stepped gingerly on the spongy ten-foot-deep layer of sphagnum moss that forms the water-logged surface of the bog.

I saw healthy eastern hemlock trees, their needles fat and glossy, their branches encrusted with white lichen. I glimpsed a shy doe through a screen of red spruce. Circular clumps of cinnamon fern dotted the landscape. Blue sky arched over all. I sensed the secret life of plants as an inaudible hum.

It seemed with each breath, my feeling of calm and "wholeness" grew. I commented to my companion that any person who would visit the Glades could not help but experience a healing of body and spirit.
The rare plant species I encountered at the Glades deserve the honor of individual posts. More to come. ABC Wednesday