Bogged down, buoyed up

To celebrate Spring, adfamiliares and I decided to hike the Bog Meadow Trail after dinner tonight. It's a two-mile path through wetlands, following the route of a passenger railroad that used to carry people from downtown Saratoga Springs to the lake. The old ties are scattered beside the trail or sunk into it. Today, red-winged blackbirds hopped through the bare branches, and choruses of little brown frogs asked us questions from the water: "Cork? Cork? Kee-york?" We talked about SWIL and teaching and the plane of the ecliptic, and passed right by an excellent horseshoe-shaped beaver dam, built around the head of the outflow stream, that had raised the water level everywhere else by a good eight inches or so.

When we reached the boardwalk (visible on this map), there was a forlorn red birdhouse hanging from a wire above the water, ignored by the dozens of birds that chirped and croaked in the reeds, and a red-spotted newt wriggling along the bottom. It was intensely peaceful, like I was a flute with a low steady note blowing through me.

(Etymological trivia: "eft" and "newt" are actually the same word, with "an eft" becoming "an ewt" and finally "a newt".)

We walked back into a watercolor sunset of lavender and peach and salmon, reflected and intensified by the water. By chance, we found something wonderful: in a Tupperware container hidden beneath a log beside the trail, instead of the moldy egg salad sandwich we expected, we found a notebook wrapped in two baggies. It had been left by a Scout named Maggie almost exactly a year ago, and it was filled with colorful ink stamps and notes left by other travelers. By the time we reached it, the ink pad and the pens were gone, so we scrawled our contribution with the half-inch stub of green crayon that remained, then hid it all away again. The front page of the notebook read "Welcome to sunset on the bog..." I wonder how she knew?

[Edit: a Google search reveals that it wasn't left by a Scout named Maggie — it was left by Scout, Eagle Eye, and Maggie. This page mentions the three of them, and elsewhere on the site is a list of letterboxes like the one we found that have been left all around the country!]

( Part the reeds for more photos. )

( Click here for bonus fireworks and nighttime photography. )