From the Blog... to the Bog (SWF)

It’s the places, small in name, immense in value, that intrigue me.
Places like fens, and bogs, where the lives evolved within are rare.
Worlds unto themselves,
remnants from ages past--
these are true treasures to explore.


The Cranberry Glades sit high within the Allegheny mountains of the Monongahela National Forest, bounded as a bowl at an elevation that allows this rare community, resembling arctic tundra, to exist as far south as Pocahontas County, West Virginia.

The Bog Plains

A cranberry hides within

Within its 750 acres, dense stands of Red Spruce and Hemlock interrupt the broad, rosy bog plains of prostrate cranberry vines and bog rosemary, a woven, 10-foot deep peat base, their anchor.

False Hellebore, Veratrum viride

Quiet pools of dark, water, lumps of felled trees at their edges, sprout glowing patches of marsh marigold and false hellebore, the pleated leaves playing with shadows on a bright and sunny late April morning.

Marsh Marigold, Caltha palustris

From a boardwalk protecting the fragile, acidic ground beneath it, I watched as a small gray bird announced his territory’s edge—the sun on a bare branch from within the cover of dark evergreen, illuminating his raised golden crown.

Golden-crowned Kinglet, buried in branches

And, minutes later, my first Blackburnian Warbler, throat glowing orange, the same thick green woods, home to him, too.

Eastern Skunk Cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus

Golden mounds of carnivorous pitcher plants, dot the sun-filled plains.
Skunk cabbage unrolls its first small leaf.
And, soon wild orchids and sundew will be visible here.


For one day, we were all in one place.
Bloggers to the bog— treasures wonderfully remembered.

The Nature Bloggers:
Nature Remains, Wrenaissance Reflections, Hasty Brook, Susan Gets Native, KatDoc's World, Sycamore Canyon, From the Faraway, Nearby, Mary's View

See more Skywatch here.