I am the type of person who, when I hear about a boardwalk trail through a swamp, cannot wait to go hike it. Provided that the weather is too cold for mosquitoes of course. And snakes. Since moving to the south I have come to appreciate the strange, primordial forests filled with amazing biodiversity and interesting plants. Recently, I came across a pin of the Ponkapoag Bog Trail in the Blue Hills Reservation, and pretty close to my parents house. Naturally, the vegetation was quite different from the dismal swamps I see in the South.

The trail begins following a narrow boardwalk through a corridor of trees. Mostly small trees and shrubs.

Then the trail opened into a beautiful meadow surrounded by small pine trees. The ground was not solid here, but actually quite soggy; as I discovered accidentally when I stepped off the boardwalk to let another hiker pass. The “grass” is mostly moss, with some pretty red and gold colors. The white fluffy things are the seed heads of cotton grass.

Finally, the view of Ponkapoag Pond at the end of the trail, a pretty scene framed by lush foliage, which had just started to turn.

This was a really interesting and pretty easy trail, about 2 miles roundtrip. It was narrow though, on busy weekends that might be a problem.

I’ve been to several cities that have nice parks to walk in, but never actually hiking, like Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. We had fine scottish weather for our hike, meaning it was foggy and drizzly, but not raining hard enough to ruin the day. And the rocks looked pretty in the fog anyways. Also, since the fog obscured our view, we didn’t feel any guilt about not getting to the top. I think we did enough walking up and down hills just around the city anyways.

Thistle! Because you can’t go to Scotland and not take a picture of thistle.

It was a really pretty park, and we got to see some of the natural environment without leaving the city. And when were were done, the pub was pretty close.