23 December 2023 – Drizzle and misty fog as far as the eye can see. Obviously, it’s time to visit the Camosun Bog.

I am deep in my annual passion for winter moss, and where better to find it than in a bog on a mist-drenched day?

I love moss year-round, for its variety and textures and also for the generous way it supports other life. Find moss, you’ll find baby ferns and teeny-tiny fungi as well. Like this splendid tree trunk, which I noticed yesterday while out for otherwise mundane purposes.

Today I am purpose-driven. Show me your moss!

Even as I approach the bog proper — with its 300 metres of boardwalk separating the wetland from the encircling forest — there is moss to cheer me on.

Moss shooting up these forked branches…

and moss flung all over this snake fence…

working its way into every criss-cross.

On down the path — and there’s the bog, with its oval of open water expansive after all our fall rain.

The ground cover looks tawny from this view point, but it is a mixture of red and green, mostly comprised of the 13 varieties of sphagnum moss that cover this wetland, and provide the groundwork for its entire ecosystem.

For all I am moss-driven, I do see other colours as I walk the perimeter. Red bare branches, for example…

and the golden/rusty/blackened greens of this swirl of ferns.

I take a side path for a bit, one that will connect me with the rest of Pacific Spirit Park, should I so choose. But no. I’m not here for the larger park. I’m here because, as memory serves, there are some moss extravaganzas to be had among the trees that line this bit of trail.

Just around that bend, I think…

Yes!

It gets wonderfully silly. A dripping moss finger,,,

a languid limb, sporting fern accessories…

and more and more.

Eventually I head back to the bog proper and follow its circular path, which tumbles a whole carpet of sphagnum mosses beside me as I walk.

Another side trail, into the forest, to enjoy moss + tiny fungi on a log end…

moss blankets over fallen logs…

and, amid all that green, the vivid, textured punch of a dead tree trunk. With its bark peeled away, it is now a magnet for every hungry woodpecker.

I double back on the bog trail. I’m about to leave and, as I go, I lean into this cluster of long-needled evergreens. They glitter with moisture, a droplet on almost every needle.

Finally, my leaving-the-bog ritual. I check a distinctive stump that I always somehow miss on the way in, but always notice on the way out.

Dry season, it looks shrivelled and parched.

But look at it now!