The Mudflats

No political mud this time.  Today, it was the real deal.

Since the summer has been unusually warm, and many flowers seem to be blooming early, I thought I’d take a hike to my favorite iris spot.  Irises love boggy marshy areas, and there’s a great one near here.  Usually they are blooming by mid June, so I thought I’d go check it out in the hopes they made an early showing.

It soon became apparent that this was no hike.  This was a slog.

The path was interrupted by long stretches of deep black mud. Successful navigation required walking way up on the side of the mud hole, clinging to alder branches, and inching along while hanging backward over the gooey mess, all the while knowing that a broken branch or miscalculated hand or foothold, and you were an unceremonious splat away from disaster.

‘Buf’ the dog tagged along, watching my slow progress and contortionism in the trees, as I made my way around the mud pit.  Her way was much more efficient, and she looked a bit amused at my silly human antics.

The second challenge was the trees.  Last winter we had a terrible wind storm and hundreds of trees in the area were blown down.  Some trees were live ones, torn up by the roots.  Others were dead spruce, rendered lifeless by the dreaded spruce bark beetle years ago.  When these went down, the trunks were snapped in two like a pencil.  This trail was littered with dead spruce, and their sharp dangerous broken branches sticking up everywhere, tangled all together, making climbing over the huge piles risky business.  There were pokes and scrapes and snared backpacks, and several four-letter words, but no major injury.  I realized when I got back that I didn’t take any pictures of them. I was just happy to get out of there without being impaled.

Scrambling through this stuff was pretty tiring, and once I’d hit a clearing, and just before it started getting boggy, I saw some nice violets, which are fond of moist areas, and decided to sit for a minute.

I was hot and sweaty and needed a rest. No sooner had my butt hit the ground, than a cloud of mosquitoes rose up from all around me.  My landing had quite forcefully announced the presence of a warm-blooded being, and “rung the dinner bell.”  Then the flies came.  Black ones, and neon yellow ones, big and small.  This was no time to sit.

To check for the irises, more mud navigation was required, more walking down fallen trees that acted as unreliable but necessary balance beams over big swampy areas. 

When no trees were available, it became a game of hopping from one high and semi-dry spot to the next.  Tall tufts of moss and grasses stuck up out of the muck, and acted as stepping stones.  Using these “stepping tufts” felt like leaping from one giant tall pile of soggy pillows to another. Finally, here was the spot and ….. no irises.  Not a one in sight.  No buds even.

But all was not for naught.  Marsh marigolds were blooming and a couple other little white flowers I can’t name.  Some bog flower smelled sweet, and some other plant smelled like fresh rosemary.  The same pair of flies must have liked my company because they followed me for quite a while, much to my annoyance.  Jumping on soggy pillows while wearing a backpack and a camera and flailing around swatting creepy yellow flies all at the same time was a recipe for catastrophe, but luckily I navigated out.

I’ll try this again in two weeks, only because I know how lovely it is when the purple irises and the bright yellow marsh marigolds bloom together in this beautiful spot.

Although the hike was short in length, it was definitely a work out.  I caught up to Buf the dog, resting in the driveway, looking like exhausted, happy road-kill.  Do they make dog-shaped mud boots?