A lone pine tree in the bog.

I’ve always wanted to visit a bog, I was in plenty of swamps when I was a kid but never a bog that has layers of peat that accumulates over thousands of years. The kind of bog where sphagnum moss comes from and carnivorous plants grow. A bog that is a setting for many Irish and English stories – Bring in the peat to warm the cottage or get out the hounds out because little Seamus is lost in the fen. A place where fairies lure you in with little lights and you disappear in the quagmire.   

Imagine my delight when I found out that there is a bog trail at Kouchibouguac National Park. It is the first trail Maya and I hike.

The word bog brings to mind a place that is misty, gray, foggy  and full of foreboding and mystery. Well the evening we hiked was sunny and breezy so scratch the first part of that description. It was full of mystery and surprises and a little foreboding would have helped me watch Maya more carefully – but more about her mishap later.

I’ve never seen lichen this large!

At the beginning of the trail were these trees covered in the largest lichen I had ever seen. It looked like veiny greenish gray hands trying to strangle the trunk. I’m still searching to see what kind it is. We entered a swampy forest filled with fern and a black stream. The park service had built  a boardwalk the entire trail to avoid slogging through the mud and worse. Soon the forest began to thin out. Many trees were dying because the ground was so wet and finally the woods opened up to the sky. We were met with brilliant color and waves of flowers, I didn’t expect that! Once in a while there would be a lone feathery pine tree but not any real shade here.

Orchids

There were clusters of feathery white orchids everywhere. Tall purple flowers and bright yellow ones. The ground cover was a beautiful earthy red with bright leaves of green (blueberry or cranberry bushes) and a whitish lacy growth. Now; where were those carnivorous plants?

This is one type of pitcher plant.

I saw one likely suspect: it had a tall single stem and what looked like a large red/green flower with six petals. They always seemed to face the ground, not the sun. On closer inspection it had a pouch underneath with a lot of insects coming and going. Later on I found out it is a type of pitcher plant. On the trail back I found another type of pitcher plant – this one emerges from the ground in groups, it holds a pool of water (and digestive juices) between it’s leaves for insects to fall in. Because the soil is so nitrogen-poor these plants have evolved another way to get nourishment.

While I was admiring all of the flowers I wasn’t watching Maya very well – behind me I heard a sloshing sucking sound. Wheeling around I saw at the end of my leash just a pair of eyes and a little nose sticking up. She had a “What now, Ma?” look in her eyes and was trying to dog paddle her front legs. I hauled her out of the bog by the scruff of her neck, she wasn’t phased in the least, just shook really hard, covering me with this gooey brown stuff. When I looked back to where she had gone in, the ground looked solid enough but now both of us knew the truth. By the time I drove back to camp most of that gooey brown stuff had dried and guess what it was? Peat Moss, another mystery solved.

One of the ponds.

A close up of what the mossy ground looks like.

These pitcher plants are just poking through the peat, you can see the little pools of water in them.

I love the colors of these plants!