On Google Earth it looks like a shag rug. Deep green, a hidden oasis surrounded by modern civilization. I circle the margin, trying to become part of that world of shallow water and thick Atlantic Cedars. And I fail. It’s closed off to non-avians; I bet a tick would struggle to survive. The bog is inaccessible. Impenetrable, impassable, impervious.
Below the rail trail, I work along the swampy edge, a bushwhack that is plenty difficult enough. Hemlocks and pines surround the area, making a bright day gloomy down here. A duck blows up in front of me, perhaps a Wood Duck. By luck, I find the trickling outflow, the only place where water visibly flows. In the bog the surface appears dead still, moving slow and secretly. Is it just a kettle hole that has filled with peat? Like Marjory Stoneman Douglas says in The Everglades – River of Grass, “Year after year it grew and was fed by its own brown rotting, taller and denser in the soil of its own death.” Is there a Mastodon somewhere down there, hidden since the glacier’s retreat?
This mini-Glades is Joshua’s Trust’s Atlantic White Cedar Bog, a rare gem of an ecosystem. Yes, I can peer in, but admission is severely restricted. Though surrounded by random swamps and ponds, it’s a biological island. Peat is waterlogged, partially decomposed plant remains. The acidic nature of the muck inhibits amphibian and reptile life, as well as much usual wetland plant life. It’s no surprise that rot-resistant cedar is the dominant tree species. Who knows, these cedars may have even been harvested in the past. An occasional huge white pine standing on a hump oversees all, looking like a baobab on a savannah. The usual fauna is almost absent, mostly limited to flying insects, including some rare butterflies and moths, and the birds.
An unseen hawk is irritated; is it me or the squalling Jays that interfere with the morning’s hunt? I can see that some areas are almost dead; water and thus life must have fluctuated through the decades. Generally shallow, a bog’s existence is risky. Preserved Mastodons are unlikely. Seasonal changes in water level are normal, but it is evident that any more dramatic disturbances, such as that due to nearby development, endanger the whole ecosystem. Twenty-three acres of multifamily housing is due for construction right next door, and the Trust’s recommendations to preserve the bog have been agreed to. Cross your fingers. This North Windham locale is beaten up by industry, sand and gravel mining, human businesses new and old. Across the railroad bed are more cedars, technically of the bog, but they are ragged or lifeless. Did the 1860s railroad construction destroy this part, or conserve the good part – or both? I hear my first warbler call of the new year. For maybe twelve thousand years the bog has existed right here while trees and other beings migrated north past it. As they still do.
© George Jacobi
Thanks so much for this poetic review George. I too have wondered what lies deep within the interior of this property, and I too found it to be impenetrable to my efforts, which is perhaps as it should be. The health of these bogs is obviously tied to the whims of the hydrologic cycle, and extended period of water levels that are too low or too high can wreak havoc on the trees that grow there. The water level is largely controlled by a teenie-weenie stone box culvert under the rail trail that is prone to clogging, sometimes at the hands (claws?) of the local beaver population. Joshua’s Trust has made it a priority to keep that culvert free of debris to maintain the water levels to which the trees in the bog have become accustomed.
I, too, love the Mystery of the Bog. Thank you for putting it into words.