Photos of a lesser-known ecosystem

November 22, 2016 9:08 AM

The Secret World of Bog - a photo essay about the beautiful boglands of British Columbia's outer coast.
posted by moonmilk (22 comments total)

A quality Canadian in-joke for the article title. Also very interesting.
posted by GuyZero at 9:34 AM on November 22, 2016

This is a beautiful piece!
posted by joelf at 9:39 AM on November 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

For a person that grew up in the Chihuahuan desert, the muskegs full of sphagnum moss on Vancouver island (where the trails were wooden walkways) were the alivest place I'd ever seen. Throw in the crabs and salmon and the shellfish, well, that's my idea of paradise, not some tropical island.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:42 AM on November 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Wonderful. I started a small container bog last year with pitcher plants and sun dews. A fun way to experience a native bog in your house.
posted by misterpatrick at 9:44 AM on November 22, 2016

More of this, please!
posted by vacapinta at 10:22 AM on November 22, 2016

Now I am moved to cultivate some moss, for reals. Very cool post.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 10:29 AM on November 22, 2016

Letter of Recommendation: Bogs, by Henry Wismayer.
posted by languagehat at 10:49 AM on November 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

GuyZero, what is the Canadian in-joke? I was wondering why she called it "Secret World of Bog" and not "Bogs".

I want a container bog now too!
posted by moonmilk at 11:58 AM on November 22, 2016

That is gorgeous. I love places where I can be at once overwhelmed by panoramic beauty and fixated on minute details.

Serious question: would a person have to marinate in DEET to enjoy such a place without getting mauled by skeeters, no-see-ums, chiggers, and their friends?
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:59 AM on November 22, 2016

Bogs! All hail bogs! I love bogs. Here are some cool bogs I have visited and recommend you check out if you are in the area:

If one is at or around UBC in Vancouver, Camosun Bog is a restored (non-native plants removed & native ones reintroduced) bog with a cute boardwalk.

The Alaka'i Wilderness Preserve on Kaua'i hosts several high-altitude bogs. Pictures from my fun but very damp hike there last spring.
posted by quaking fajita at 12:33 PM on November 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Secret World of Og

The book is nearly as wonderful book as these photos.
posted by Cosine at 12:43 PM on November 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Secret World of Og

cosine has it. Pierre Berton was a writer and historian who wrote several dozen books on Canadian history and one book of the stories he told his kids at bedtime.
posted by GuyZero at 12:48 PM on November 22, 2016

Thanks for cracking the code, Cosine and GuyZero!

quaking fajita, have you ever visited the eponypropriate Cheesequake State Park in New Jersey? It has some wetlands, though I'm not sure if they count as bogs.
posted by moonmilk at 12:59 PM on November 22, 2016

Love this. Thank you. I grew up carefully stepping around and through different types of bog (Western Washington) and I took for granted what a rare and beautiful environment a bog is. Anyone want to try skunk cabbage? It's surprisingly spicy.
posted by branravenraven at 1:24 PM on November 22, 2016

Great post, and great article. Hakai is just great, period. Their office is actually just down the street from where I live.

I live in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, and I have to say I prefer the West Coast to the east side of the Island. Every summer we go camping a couple of times a year at French Beach or China Beach, and rent a cabin in Port Renfrew quite close to Botantical Beach.

There's something about entering a new terrain just east of Sooke. The hemlock and Doug fir and white fir forests give way to Sitka spruce rainforest (second-growth, typically). From Botanical you can see the end of the Olympic Peninsula and the open Pacific.
posted by My Dad at 1:27 PM on November 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Don't ever try raw skunk cabbage, though. Spicy is an understatment. http://wildfoodsandmedicines.com/slider-1/
posted by branravenraven at 1:37 PM on November 22, 2016

Very nice! I grew up in Minnesota, in an outdoorsy family that did a lot of nature hikes, so these bog pictures made me nostalgic and wistful after so many years of living in the desert southwest. Go bogs!
posted by Squeak Attack at 2:14 PM on November 22, 2016

Nice relaxing pictures to look at while having a bog, thanks!
posted by Joe Chip at 2:49 PM on November 22, 2016

I'm one of the Hakai Institute funded researchers, though not on the bog side of things - mostly I curse the bogs as we haul our gear through them! An interesting aspect of these very wet spots is that they actually do burn off fairly regularly. See for example

The Burning Bog

More bog photos from one of my friends on the project

Plants of the Bog

Bug Eating Plants of the Bog

Anyway, the whole Hakai Institute thing is incredible. The magazine is editorially independent, and just a tiny part of the "ecosystem". The whole thing is funded by a billionaire philanthropist couple dedicated to natural and human deep history of the coast - with an eye to social justice and environmental activism on a base of solid science. It's an admirable undertaking, and, with the generous and fairly open-ended funding we've been able to advance our general research project by 15 or 20 years in less than 5.
posted by Rumple at 6:47 PM on November 22, 2016 [7 favorites]

That toad was cool as hell.
posted by radicalawyer at 7:29 PM on November 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

We have a peat bog near us with a friendly sign informing us how in some bogs corpses from hundreds of years ago could be pulled up with so little decomposition that you can still make out the expression on their face.
Thanks, Government of Canada!
Peat bogs are so fucking metal.
posted by Theta States at 8:45 AM on November 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mike Dash explores the darker side of bogs.
posted by christopherious at 4:19 PM on November 23, 2016