A Flower Reminds Me Where I Belong
Lost in nature or culture, I find my way to bogs and Rhodora
If you’re a field biologist heading to a bog, your first concern isn’t usually a hot-pink flower. Not that the flower doesn’t matter. It does. But first, you must get to the bog without getting yourself lost.
That’s because trails to bogs are rare — at least to most bogs I’ve visited over the past four decades. In the days before GPS, I would bushwhack to bogs with a map and compass. And, sure, if I got too eager chasing a warbler or too distracted by an orchid, I’d sometimes get turned around and lost.
Like the time I went off-course chasing dragonflies at a bog in Saskatchewan. From a remote gravel road, I navigated well enough to the bog, which was lovely, but lost my bearings on the way back. I also lost my nerve. When the road and my truck failed to appear, my heart began to pound and my mind played tricks on common sense: Maybe my compass needle had lost its affinity for north. What if I had the declination wrong? Or maybe my hand-drawn map was no good. “Just keep walking northwest, Bryan,” I kept telling myself, “and you’ll hit the road.” Otherwise, I might be lost for good. Eventually, common sense and magnetic north prevailed. Never was I so happy to see a gravel road.
But that relief has never come close to the euphoria I experience each time I arrive at a bog. And these arrivals have little to do with being lost, found, or any bushwhack. The bushwhacks are usually fine, by the way. And even when they’re not, when the black flies and my aches and pains and mood get the better of me, I would bear far worse to reach a bog. That’s because the moment I arrive at a bog, everything in the world goes right for me. Everything falls into place.
To convey for you this feeling of contentment, I can only hope you yourself experience something similar. Maybe it’s the bliss you feel coming home to the person or family you love, or the sublime you might notice at a moving flourish while listening to music. I suspect you know of others.
At a bog, I find safety and sensuality — a sense of belonging and transcendence alike. And in spring, at many bogs I am greeted by the flowers of Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense).
Among those blooms, whether I’ve come for science or business or pleasure, I find rare birds, butterflies, and dragonflies. Better yet, I find joy, contemplation, and meaning. Yeah, all that from wetlands too often dismissed in the culture as dark, dangerous, and worthless.
Far from worthless, bogs are timeless. Born of the retreat of glaciers here in New England more than 10,000 years ago, bogs are slow-motion ecosystems. Their change is measured in centuries, not years. Wars, fascists, greed, hatred — bogs are not immune to them, but generally outlast them.
And maybe that’s another reason I make the bushwhacks. At a bog, for me, the world stops spinning so fast. It did the same for Henry David Thoreau more than 150 years ago.
“There are no richer parterres to my eyes than … these tender places on the earth’s surface,” Thoreau wrote in his final essay, titled Walking. “Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the shrubs which grow there — the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, lambkill, azalea, and rhodora — all standing in the quaking sphagnum.”
I now stand beside him, with wet feet at those tender places unchanged. However lovely or arduous the bushwhack, however lost I might find myself in nature or culture, when I arrive at the quaking sphagnum, the Rhodora tells me, yeah, you’ve made it, Bryan. You’re here. You’re alive. You’re home.
Bonus Images
Postscripts
Like its botanical kin the azaleas, and unlike some rhododendrons, Rhodora is deciduous, dropping its leaves in autumn. In spring, Rhodora erupts into those blooms before its leaves emerge — a very good look in a bog.
Granted, in really boggy places, like Maine, Rhodora can show itself along roadsides. Good for anyone who wanders or drives by!
For the style police among you, yep, contrary to most style manuals, I capitalize the common names of plants, animals, fungi, and other wild things here at Chasing Nature. (Thoreau didn’t capitalize rhodora and other species, nor do most other writers.) Hey, it’s my Substack — I set the rules.
To my mind, Walking is among Thoreau’s most challenging essays. I had to read it twice before I realized that it’s less about walking than about spirituality, civilization, and a more virtuous form of Manifest Destiny (although he never uses the term). At just over 12,000 words, Walking was published in The Atlantic Monthly in June 1862, shortly after Thoreau died of tuberculosis at age 44.
Beautiful. I describe you to people as someone who writes like Thoreau but doesn't use 100 words when 50 will do...etc. But to me the most powerful line in the whole thing is: "Like the time I went off-course chasing dragonflies at a bog in Saskatchewan." I mean, c'mon...how many people can say that?
Good job Brian! I love nature essays written by bushwhacking humans with whom I feel kinship. Nature, literature, and community (even if online); what a royal combination!