As I sat on the bus on the way to the bog, I couldn’t help but gaze out of the window, as much as I needed a nap. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I was just amused at how bulky and out of place the bus must have looked puttering along the township roads. Soon after making a stop to look at some turkeyfoot grass in a remnant patch of prairie, the corn-covered hills rolling out to the horizon were replaced by shady woodland. Suddenly something caught my eye—a hickory tree! The bus passed so quickly that I couldn’t tell if it was fruiting but it was nice to find something I wasn’t looking for. Just as soon as I saw that hickory tree with its large drooping leaves the bus came to a stop in the shade of some black walnut trees (which were fruiting, but the nuts were so small that it wouldn’t be worthwhile to drive out and harvest them). A wooden sign identified the place as Brown’s Bog, and following a brief brief the class set out down the trail.
I had read that this reach of the Killbuck was sort of like the Everglades of Ohio, and although everything seemed a bit dry I was truly convinced some tropical element was at work. All around the trail were great bunches of ferns, their fronds reaching in every direction. Many of the trees had thin and spindly trunks with small leaves, casting a mottled shade. And of course there was us, trekking along one after another as if on a safari along a planned route, or similarly like a herd of elephants marching noisily down to the watering hole. The closer we got to the bog itself the more I wondered, having lived in Ohio all of my life without ever encountering a place like this. The ground itself was alien to me in some places, being porous enough to be tamped down by a few jumps upon it. The boardwalk here lead directly toward the water, stopping just short of it but having a railed platform. Here we had most of our academic discussion, and here I was reminded of the pervasiveness of human activities. An impressive condensation trail from some aircraft stripped across the northeast sky. The bog pond was in the beginning stages of eutrophication resulting from agricultural runoff, with algae beginning to mat over the water along the shore. The whole place was just a little bit dry– partially from the change in seasons but also partially from the drainage ditches that run adjacent to the reserve.
Leaving the lookout platform, we saw some pitcher plants clustered about the bog, verdant green and blending in very well with their surroundings. Once I spotted them, however, they were glaringly visible, foreign to me but natural to the landscape. We took a side trail to the uplands of the property and here, off the boardwalk, I slowed down and fell behind the group, the better to perceive these woods. I found the environment more typical of the Ohio I knew, less swampy and more woody. Here there were many hickory trees but they were all quite young; this forest was relatively new growth. Stumbling over knotty tree roots while listening to the muffled conversations of the group brought back memories of weekend trips with my boy scout troop, and I was thrown into introspective nostalgia for much of this side trip.
When we returned to the bus we were met with a Nature Conservancy worker whose calmness would have been appreciated best before the hike— I personally was ready to go back to campus and get ready for my other obligations of the evening. He was very informational, however, and even extended a volunteer opportunity to us.
All in all I am grateful to have experienced some of Ohio’s Everglades firsthand but a bit underwhelmed by the state of it. Learning about the consequences of human activity was helpful but ultimately opened up a can of worms with the discussion of keeping the forest in check to preserve the bog, in an area designated for unfettered wilderness. In addition to looking up the difference between bogs and fens (and marshes and swamps), I have some research to do concerning swamps in Ohio (particularly the Great Black Swamp of the Sanduskey) and of the Everglades. There was so much to learn from the Everglades, and the fight for their protection was an early battle in the crusade of the Environmentalist Movement, and I bet it could be applied to the quagmire that is Brown’s Bog.
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