{"id":16325,"date":"2020-05-03T00:59:15","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T04:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=16325"},"modified":"2021-09-12T20:33:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T00:33:11","slug":"ponkapoag-bog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2020\/05\/03\/ponkapoag-bog\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking The Boardwalk Through Ponkapoag Bog In The Blue Hills"},"content":{"rendered":"

For about a decade and a half beginning in the 1930s, Professor William J. V. Babcock had been taking his biology classes from Eastern Nazarene College in Wollaston to study \u201cinvasion and succession of plant life\u201d at the Ponkapoag bog in the Blue Hills. They visited in winter, when the frozen ground allowed them to venture out onto the usually soggy expanse.<\/p>\n

First established in 1893, the state\u2019s Blue Hills Reservation<\/a>\u2014now spanning 7,000 acres from Quincy to Dedham to Milton to Randolph\u2014gets its name from the series of peaks south of Boston, reaching 635 feet at Great Blue Hill with a view across the city. But in the lowlands, the bog slowly encroaches on Ponkapoag Pond.<\/p>\n

In 1947, Babcock pushed forward with an idea to make the spagnum moss bog accessible for study year round by floating a log trail over the bog in early spring before things thawed too much, according to an August 1953 Boston Globe article titled \u201cTropical Swamp in the Blue Hills: Baby Orchids and Acres of Azaleas Bloom in Miracle Bog Outside Boston.\u201d Babcock and Nazarene volunteers, dressed in hip boots, dragged fallen logs from the surrounding landscape to become a makeshift boardwalk. In 1953, the area supported white cedars and maples, orchids, fly traps, water lilies, azaleas, sundews, blueberries and pitcher plants.<\/p>\n