Peat yo' self!
Spring...or the new summer?...in a Maine bogland
New England summer is not what it once was. Our ascendant temperatures and dew points have made being outdoors more punishing and potentially dangerous. Last summer, when simply walking to the nearest bus stop was enough to necessitate wringing out your shirt, a lot of us started scheduling most of our outdoor activities for the mornings and evenings, just like a lot of the people in Arizona and Florida who strategically retreat into air-conditioned venues during the midday hours. If this keeps up, as it’s likely to, it’s going to transform the way in which New Englanders think about summer—or when we decide to take our day trips. Consider the spring shoulder. April rain can be a drag too, but it’s not going to leave you burnt, dehydrated, or exhausted.
I’ve been trying to get a head start on recalibrating to our new seasonal reality. And in doing so, I was recently humbled and bedazzled by something spectacular, folded into the outskirts of Saco, Maine—only 20 minutes south of Portland and 90 minutes north of Boston. I say “humbled” because this place was a total surprise to me. But here’s an open secret about the travel writing profession. Every regional expert whose articles or guidebooks you’ve enjoyed has passed over wondrous destinations in the heart of their territory; in the same way that a squirrel hunting for Mother’s Day picnic scraps at an arboretum might overlook a fresh pile of acorns beside one of the trees. But what I had missed in Maine was much bigger than a pile of acorns. Bigger, and mossier too.
It’s often assumed that if you want to witness a Maine peat bog in all its spongy glory, you have to drive north. Like, far north; to Bangor, the Maine Highlands, or the fucking Allagash. And that’s why I was so excited to learn about the Saco Heath—a 1,218-acre oasis of sphagnum moss, black spruce trees, Atlantic white cedars, and tamaracks. It’s Maine’s southernmost peatland bog and this distinction means that Saco Heath is home to several plants seldom found in other parts of Maine, like the black gum tree.
And bear in mind, when we say “bog” in the context of Saco Heath, we’re talking about a special kind of bogland. Long ago, the heath was little more than a pond, but as lots of decaying vegetation (peat) accumulated in the waters, it slowly outgrew the pond and formed a dome-like shape, from which trees and plants eventually gestated. This is what we call a “raised coalesced bog” and the humble Saco Heath is believed to be the southernmost example of this bogland. Not just in Maine, but in the entire world.
So why do we call this sort of ecosystem a “heath?” Because heather plants thrive on sphagnum moss, and I suppose back in an earlier century, the poor souls who had to perambulate the bounds of country villages in Scotland were getting fed up with their soggy boots and losing the will to bestow more elaborate monikers on the shrubbier wetlands. Rather than “land of heathers” or “heather, my god to thee,” the bog simply became a “heath.” But conotations evolve with time, and in 1928, a pair of St. Louis candy entrepeneurs decided to call their chocolate-dipped toffee bar the “Heath Bar” because of the way its multi-tonal brown colors brought to mind the color of a heath.
They didn’t really. I just made that up. But nonetheless, the peat bog has captivated and entranced visitors for centuries. Knowing that Maine boasts such a bounteous bogland in the middle of a developed residential area with its own regional transit authority and industrial zones, I couldn’t help but pay an impromptu visit to the Saco Heath on a shivery, sodden April afternoon that would test my newfound resolve to start treating April like June, in a recreational sense. The Saco Heath is preserved by The Nature Conservancy and it’s accessible by way of a flat, 1-mile trail that’s largely made up of slatted boardwalk! As if I needed another good reason to seek the heath.
When I pulled off of Buxton Road into the large parking area for Saco Heath, I wasn’t exactly surprised to find the place completely vacant (save for all the puddles) but I did wonder if this foreshadowed something problematic, like neglected, broken bog bridges or a long flooded segment of the trail. Usually Bog People are not put off by a little rain and wind. But I was wrong to doubt the quality of the trail maintenance. No sooner had I entered the initial hemlock woodlands when I hit my first boardwalk: an unjulating thing which wove between lichen speckled tree trunks over pools of cloudy water and reedy plants. This was just the taster boardwalk—like the first few verses of “November Rain,” before the symphonic strings escalate and Slash starts to make his guitar wail. Being on the heath on this dismal spring day felt like walking through the song. There was great beauty in the heartbreak, and soon there would be sprawl too.
There are few things that can prepare you for the thrill and awe of emerging from the forest into a vast peatland bog, and when the second, much longer boardwalk of the Saco Heath transports you into the open-air heath itself…well, you might want to take advantage of the onsite benches and just gaze. The rumble of cars and trucks, which is audible from the boundary woods, vanishes as soon as you enter the heath. The trees that were coming back to life alongside the wooden passage were glistening with pearls of condensation and their needles had taken on a pale, electric shade of green. Even the boardwalk was a palette. The wood slats came in multiple colors, and this made following the boardwalk feel like walking along a strange autumnal rainbow.
That last part has lingered in my mind since leaving Saco Heath for sunnier weather. A rainbow can occur throughout the year, wherever there’s rain; regardless of whether that rain is muggy or shivery. Some of us will witness a rainbow this summer, on the heels of a thunderstorm, and it will add some splendor to what otherwise might have been a sweat-drenched slog of a day. It will make summer feel like summer, as we’ve known it. But there are rainbows of many forms to be found and savored throughout New England’s seasonal calendar. I didn’t expect to find one in the middle of Maine’s southernmost peat bogland on a day when a lot of us would have rather been at home whipping up stovetop popcorn and watching the latest episode of “Shōgun.” But I did.
Like many, I grieve for the New England summers that once were. But summer isn’t just a codified season. It’s a decadent state of living. And the Saco Heath is calling.
SACO HEATH
Hike disance: 2.1 miles out-and-back
Elevation gain: 30-ish feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map
And finally, here’s the audio episode of this week’s newsletter.
If the main thing keeping you from thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail has been a lack of cash reserves (as opposed to shuddering at the idea of crawling into your drippping tent at the end of a long day in the field), your ship might be on the verge of coming in. Carson City is looking for a pair of hikers to traverse a newly-built trail that runs from the Nevada capital to Lake Tahoe. From there, the chosen hikers must pivot north and follow the PCT to the Canadian border. Each hiker will receive $5,000 to help fund their expedition. Applications are open until late May. You can begin yours by clicking here.
Like lots of other New Englanders, I recently joined up with a few friends to beeline to far northern New Hampshire, where we experienced a total eclipse from the banks of the Androscoggin River in the Bofinger Wildlife Management Area. Together we took three cars, and since we were coming from different places, we took divergent routes back home. Most of us managed to avoid the Great Franconia Notch Logjam of 2024, in which thousands of cars crept through the overclogged stretch of I-93 that passes through the notch. But one poor member of our party did experience this apocalyptic event, in which cars ran out of gas and people relieved themselves on the side of the highway. If you also ran into the logjam, 1. I’m so sorry, and 2. I’d love to hear about it.
I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this peat bog! I’m going this month!