Wet Feet and Big Smiles

 
I had promised all day to take Taffy hiking. Just a short one, I said, up through the fields, that's all...

I did not speak truly.  We got up into the back fields just before dinner, with the sun gilding the eastern hills as it began to set. We found some deer bones.  And then some feathers that were suspiciously large and did not belong to a raven, a turkey or a goose.  There were some fragile bones with them -- and plenty of wolf scat in the field as well, so somebody had somebody for dinner.  A crow perhaps? Hard to catch, crows...  We heard the pileated woodpecker in the bog, so we wound down there.    I thought we might find some wild turkey feathers for one of the guests at the Resort who has his hat decked out with his collection.

Instead, we found a plethora of pitcher plants. These are remarkable creatures, typical of bogs.  Making a living in a spruce bog is not easy if you are a plant. There is very little available nitrogen or available chemicals called nitrates made by soil bacteria. There really isn't any soil. The plants float on a mat of plant material that gradually fills in the edges of the bog itself. With no flowing water to bring oxygen or nutrients, growth can be slow and hard.  Desperate times, however, call for desperate measures.  Pitcher plants don't just wait around -- they have developed to actively pursue their meals.  These elegant "pitchers" fill with rainwater, to which a dollop of digestive juices and just a hint of nectar is added to entice an insect to come on down. Once in the plant, the insects find they cannot climb back out the slippery walls, which are lined with tiny spines all pointing down. Exhausted, the insects will drown in the water. The plant then utilizes this 'bug soup' to create the Pitcher-plant proteins.  There is only one insect who has figured out a way to beat this very effective system, and that is a certain type of mosquito -- one, you will be pleased to hear, which does not bite humans.  This mossie lays her eggs in the quiet, nutrient rich haven of water in the pitcher.  These plants are fairly rare, so I was thrilled to find so many of them thriving along the edge of our bog.

The bog is lovely at any time of year, but never more so than now as the colours come. There will be a lot of dark greens from the black spruce, but also golds from the tamaracks, and reds and oranges in the shore vegetation, and plenty of grays in the hanging lichens.

 The maples are adding their own glorious reds into the mix, and the brackens -- which are well over a metre tall are putting on golden brown hues right now.

Taffy gets giddy with the scents of autumn. She considers this her very own personal bog, resplendent with the wonderful aromas that only a dog can detect.  She returns from her forays out of sight with wet paws and a big smile. As do I.   Labrador tea, blueberry bushes, moss by the trainload, mushrooms, ferns, wildflowers all join the mix of rabbit and deer trails, wolf scent, ducks, wild turkeys, spruce grouse, squirrels and chipmunks that simply make Taffy's day terrific

And the woodpecker that drew our footsteps there in the first place? Yes, it did show up, landing about twenty feet away on a dead tree.  I wasn't fast enough to get a picture, but I've borrowed one from stock images for those of you unfamiliar with this huge woodpecker.  The bird shadowed us as we left the bog to come home, rustling in the treetops and calling persistently, but maddenly uncatchable by camera.