In the Field with Emma: Boundary Hunting

A dramatized account of an adventure to mark boundaries in Yankee Bog

*Please note that currently Yankee Bog does not have public parking or access.

Last week brought my introduction to the complex world of property management and surveying, in the form of a detective adventure: a trip into Yankee Bog for some land-investigation work. The property has a couple of boundary markers that KELT has not been able to locate since its purchase, so Dillon Mulhern (KELT’s Stewardship Coordinator) and I ventured out - him carrying Chacos and myself toting full hip-waders for our eventual foray into the heart of the bog - to try to locate a couple of iron bars denoting corners on the eastern side of the parcel.

We pulled up to the entry road, screeched into our parking spot on the gravel shoulder, donned tool belts, and took off on foot towards the right-of-way into the property. Metal detector over one shoulder, I was ready for the hunt, and I could tell we were hot on the trail of these elusive property markers. Suddenly, Dillon paused in front of me. I stopped short, ready for anything. He bent down and reached for something on the side of the road. I tensed, anticipating a clue or a sign - my first taste of the chase. Instead, I got a taste of wild Maine blueberries! Newly fortified with local, wild-foraged treats, we were now truly prepared for our task.

A look at the edge of Yankee Bog. Photo credit J. Witham

Of the 28 properties that KELT owns in fee, only one of them contains a bog. Yankee Bog is a 17-acre, Pacman-shaped parcel that was donated to the land trust in 2019 by Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company for a wildlife preserve and continued public enjoyment. KELT has been able to protect this prime example of a black spruce-larch bog, a natural community home to some of the wackiest plants found in Maine. Bogs like this one form in areas where water collects but has no inflow or outflow, often in divots left by retreating glaciers. The resulting environment is low in oxygen and nutrients, essentially receiving its only influx of minerals from rainfall. Sphagnum moss, the keystone species in most bog ecosystems, grows in from the edges of the pond or lake, preventing evaporation and acidifying the water. Because of all these factors, very little decomposition occurs in bogs, and over thousands of years this dead vegetation sinks to form a thick layer of peat, sometimes many meters deep.

Perhaps this was a clue for our hunt: could the iron bars we were looking for have been swallowed up by the spongy sphagnum moss? I had certainly heard dramatic stories of entire buses sinking into hungry bogs, and it sounded like a sufficiently epic fate to have met our missing survey pins.

“KELT has been able to protect this prime example of a black spruce-larch bog, a natural community home to some of the wackiest plants found in Maine.”

Dillon quickly set me straight as we began to pick our way along the pink-flagged border of the property. The bog was well inside the parcel’s boundary; we would be looking for iron bars hidden beneath pine duff and leaf litter. At 10 o’clock, we left gear at a base camp nearby before heading off on a compass bearing towards the unmarked corners. The metal detector turned on with a burst of feedback before going quiet. A few steps in, it hummed portentously, insistently alerting the quiet forest to our presence. We paused, impressed at our instantaneous good luck, and swung the detector left and right to receive a chorus of screeching - loud and then softer, loud-softer, loud-soft. It seemed to be picking up something at the ground right beneath our feet. The realization hit us both at once: they were an exciting find, but our feet, clad in steel-toed boots, were not what we were looking for. We chuckled and moved on, holding the machine well away from our toes.

Sphagnum moss, keystone species of the bog, covered in spiral-shaped spore capsules.

Many minutes of searching yielded no result, so we used a GPS waypoint to try our next missing corner. This time, the metal detector located an enormous orange cone amongst a field of woody shrubs and wintergreen, and Dillon’s yelp of discovery sent me running, eager for clues. Beneath lay a pink flag attached to a metal bar - we had found our survey pin! Or so we thought, before the pin came out of the soft soil as we pulled on it, revealing not an iron bar but a nail. We called the surveyor who had most recently worked on the property, walked a compass bearing towards our next known marker, and scratched our heads about this strange pin. The mystery seemed to be deepening…

At last, realizing we needed to head back to Bath, we packed up, perhaps with more questions than at the outset. We couldn’t leave without seeing the bog, so we scrambled through the woods until the ground beneath our feet became moist and springy. Yellow-green moss lay all around us, giving the bog a tufted look that reminded me a bit of the worlds in Dr. Seuss books. Tousled, bed-headed flowers of tawny cottonsedge waved at us on their long stalks. It was hard not to cringe at each step I took as I discovered the network of heaths, mosses, sedges, and shrubs tangled beneath my feet. Labrador tea, cranberry, black spruce, tamarack, sphagnum, rose pogonia - all these unique species living on a woven mat of leaves and stems.

The tentacled leaf of a round-leaved sundew covered in drops of poisonous mucilage.

And then, looking closer, I discovered a few of the wild and fascinating carnivorous plants that make bogs so otherworldly. Because of the dearth of nutrients in these ecosystems, many species have adapted to find additional means of fueling themselves, notably among the plethora of buzzing and crawling insects that frequent these mossy wetlands. Brightly-veined leaves of purple pitcher plants gaped at me from a nearby hummock - their carefully-engineered, pitcher-shaped leaves lure insects in with sweet smells and bright colors and then trap them at the plant’s base. Stiff, downward-facing hairs and slippery sides make escape from the "pitchers" nearly impossible. Nestled among the sphagnum moss lay several round-leaved sundew, leaves sparkling with drops of the paralytic fluid that immobilizes insects unlucky enough to touch it. Digestive enzymes on the leaf-blades take a few weeks to glean the nutrients from their captured prey. I was delighted with these fantastic creatures and the ecosystem that supports them.

While Dillon and I had come to Yankee Bog hoping to solve a mystery, I left with a whole lot of new mysteries - the mystery of the survey nail and the missing corner pins, yes, but also with the mystery and wonder of natural variation and the spectacular, alien creatures of the bog.