Bog

Today, our Director of Ecological in Greater Boston, Katie, is with us to talk about one of the most misunderstood ecosystems on the planet.

Bogs.

From what makes them important to our planet to what makes them beautiful and why you should visit one as soon as you can, we're covering it all.

This episode also drops the day after Halloween, so consider it our spooky season send-off.

You know, Bog of Eternal Stench isn't the best

example.

Yeah, not a great advertisement for Bogs.

So we're going to take that image that you have in your head and turn it around, hopefully.

looks.

The Lindo man was discovered in Treshire at Peat Bog in 1984 after roughly 2,000 years.

He was around 25 years.

whoa well groomed with trimmed facial hair and maintained fingernails shortly before uh death he ate a simple grain based meal see that's what's crazy dude is looking at so they found him like this and then obviously they're able to look at the body and even which is crazy because he was preserved in the bog which i've heard before because there's other stories about them finding bodies in a bog the bodies in the bog you know and how they were able to determine that he had like trimmed his nails because he was just perfectly preserved his beard wish trimmed it's two thousand years ago

Story done.

Basically, you had a cranberry bog called Century Bog.

It was a 75-acre stretch of fields and woods across Plymouth and Wareham, Massachusetts.

Right now, it looks more like a construction site than a former bog.

Yeah.

So...

Yeah, it's just – well, Franklin Parker Preserve in New Jersey used to be – Cranberry Bog.

Cranberry Bog.

But then we're going to talk about a bigger story surrounding the environments that give rise to them.

Bogs.

Bogs themselves are crucial for the health of our planet.

But they also hold many secrets.

I'll leave it at that for now.

That's science journalist Annie Roth.

When I was doing research for this episode, I came across a story that Annie wrote for Chemical and Engineering News last October titled Will of the Wisps Mysterious Origins Explained by Chemistry.

And so I said, what? Science? Bogs? Folklore? This is a tiny matter story.

Water beneath water, breath beneath breath, walking, listening, standing, and returning, and returning again.

Bog body, I am taken into it, slow steps morphing, separate.

Let us not simplify this as wetness.

It is consent negotiated slowly.

Bodies here are kept, not to be erased or resolved.

Skin tightens hair, stains red with iron bone learns patience.

Bog bodies resist incorporation into narratives of victimhood.

They remain materially present.

Actually, we've got a good blog on this as well.

We've got a blog called Poetically Baddies from the Bog.

And it is about some of these mythologies.

So I'll put a link to that in there.

let's get this out of the way.

How do you define a bog? What is it? And how is it different from a fen or a swamp?

Bogs, fens, swamps, marshes all refer to different kinds of wetlands that are very abundant in Canada.

Bogs and fens have one thing in common.

They are peatlands, which means they have developed over many thousands of years these thick, layers of peat in the ground.

And peat is simply, you know, dead organic matter.

For example, there are.

bacteria, sulfate-reducing microbes that literally produce the smell of rotten eggs, that actually tells me something about the way that that land has been shaped over time.

Aww.

I eventually found a large stretch of bogland.

Bogland.

Lucky you.

Bogland.

Bogland.

Bogland.

Bogland.

And the time, 2:30 PM, Trout Run Trailhead parking lot, Critipa Hella Audubon Society.

You can step into the floating boardwalk and experience one of Pennsylvania's most unique nature wonders at Bog Day, B-O-G, Bog Day, tomorrow at, uh, Tannersville Cranberry Bog Preserve.

This family-friendly event offers guided walks, educational displays, and opportunities to learn about the bog's fascinating history.

Uh, you can see plants and unique ecology.