LEARN MORE Mountain hikers are sometimes surprised to find that the wonders above treeline include small alpine bogs. Organic soils, cool temperatures, and constant moisture create conditions favorable to peat-loving plants. Miniature versions of leatherleaf, Labrador tea, bog laurel, cotton grass, cranberries, and sundews can be found along the Crawford Path east of Lakes of the Clouds and on other high peaks in the Adirondacks and New England. You can help in AMC’s research on climate impacts on alpine ecosystems by taking part in the Mountain Watch program.

It was the glimmer of green that attracted our attention. Not dark green, for my brother and I had seen plenty of that on this Adirondack bushwhack. It was a sunnier tone that beckoned through the spruce branches and, like so many fairy tale travelers, we veered off our chosen route, drawn to the color and light. Forcing our way through a last tangle of trees, we emerged like Dorothy into a Technicolor Oz. I had never seen one before, but I had a feeling. "It's a bog!" I whispered.

We stood dazzled, sweating in the August sun as waves of humidity rose up from the spongy ground. Before us, a ring of bushes embraced a mossy mat tufted with plants—white-topped sedges, yellow flowers, and blood-red moss—splashes of primary color in a spectrum of greens. We ventured into the open, curious and cautious, for we were not on botanical or geological solid ground. The surface sagged and burped. Puddles sloshed around our feet. Testing the way, our walking sticks sank to their handles in the mire, and we squished back to the forest edge to admire this secret garden.

Watch your feet
That first bog was small, unmapped, and unnamed, yet it made a lasting impression on my teenage mind. When the chance came in college, I signed up for a guided trip to a privately owned bog in the Berkshires. "Wear old shoes" was suggested twice in the outing description and validated by our enthusiastic leader. "Watch your feet," he warned as we approached the bog. "It's wet." He turned, stepped on a tricky log, and sank to his shorts in the murky ooze.

Indeed, bogs are nothing if not wet. Unlike marshes and swamps, in which circulating water brings oxygen and minerals for plant life, bogs form where there is little or no water movement at all. Water and nutrients come chiefly from precipitation. Oxygen levels are low, so as dead plant material accumulates it is slow to decompose. Acidity builds and, over time, layers of peat form, pickled and well preserved.

Bogs and other peatlands occur worldwide, but are most dominant in the northern hemisphere, where they cover very large areas of Alaska, Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia. Conditions are favorable in these cold climates—lots of rain and snow, a limited summer season for evaporation, and a permafrost zone that prevents drainage through the soil.

In the warmer northeastern U.S., bogs occur in depressions that collect and hold water. Lakes may develop into bogs as open water is replaced by encroaching vegetation. Classic kettle hole bogs form in basins left by retreating glacial ice. Relatively small, kettle bogs display a nesting symmetry of open water surrounded by a carpet of moss, encircled by shrubs, and ringed with dwarfed trees. Approached through these vegetative zones, the bog center is revealed as the plant curtain shrinks. Stepping out onto an open quaking bog mat is an exciting transition, as dramatic as crossing treeline into alpine tundra.

Meet the locals
Because of their wide open space, bogs are great places to see birds and other wildlife. Few creatures are limited to this habitat, however, so when we go out to find the true bog residents, we're meeting and greeting the plants. And what a neighborhood! The frugal, the freaky, the frilly—the challenges of bog living have produced an enchanting flora. Carnivorous plants are the stuff of science fiction, for there is something chilling about a plant that is working both sides of the "eat or be eaten" proposal. Chilling and irresistible.

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