I went out for a midnight hunt up the winter road with one of the other white guys in town.
A few months ago hunting was easy (well, easier). You could just drive up the road keeping your eyes open for animals. Even if you walked, the ground was firm, the air was crisp, you could make good progress. Not so any more.
When the snows melt, the land around here become bog. I’d heard of bog before I moved here, but didn’t really understand it. I remember reading that it’s hard to cross, maybe in the context of a party of hobbits attempting to do it or some such, and remember wondering what’s so hard about crossing land and shallow water?
Let me enlighten you about bog.
- The bog, at least around here, consists of dense plant life, so much life, desperately trying to grow and reproduce in the tiny window it has before the temperature plummets again.
- In the bog, water depth can range from as high as your ankle to as high as your waist. It’s very hard to tell, which you’re stepping into, since there’s so much grass and fronds and other life sitting on top of it. There’s a lot of time spent deciding whether to risk taking the next step to cross a particularly suspicious section.
- In the bog, the water isn’t clean and fluid, it’s thick with soil and mud and plants of all sorts. It will grip on to your boot and try to rip it off your foot if it can. It makes the going especially hard, like walking in sand or soft snow, but worse. Each step takes a lot of energy.
- In the bog there are mosquitoes. A lot of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are desperate. Most of them will die without spawning. Some of them will manage to find a mammal whose blood to drain. Some of those have found you, and they’re going to do whatever it takes to violate your veins. They come in massive clouds, and they don’t go away. If you’re tired and accidentally breathe heavily through your mouth, they will fly in.
- In the bog, you wear gum boots (or better). You can cross a lot of things in gum boots, but eventually you’ll take a wrong step and the fetid, stagnant water will flow into your sealed boot.
- In the bog there are bears. They have a lot of other food around, so they probably won’t bother you, but if startle each other they could easily maul you to death in seconds.
Still, despite the hardships, it’s pretty awesome out there. I’ll make an effort to head out into the bog more often, and hopefully get some better bog photos to post.