Bringing it owl bog home

One of the “black spruce cathedrals” of the Sax-Zim Bog on Jan. 11, 2025. (PHOTO: Aaron J. Brown)

My latest column for the Minnesota Star Tribune,I grew up in a Minnesota bog the size of New York City; I didn’t know it was special,” is out now.

I know longtime readers already heard my stories about growing up on a junkyard in the Sax-Zim Bog. What can I say? In more ways than one, it was a tremendously formative experience for me. As a kid, the junked cars and the emotional machinations of my family were much more obvious to me than the natural world I was living in. But as junky and environmentally questionable as my immediate surroundings were, the broader world I lived in was an ecological wonder I’m only now beginning to appreciate.

That’s the premise of today’s column. I recall the bog of my youth before returning as an adult with my family to see what I couldn’t understand at the time. An important example of effective conservation can be found, with hope for the future.

Read the column in the Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025 edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune.

 

One of the popular “bogwalks” maintained by the Friends of the Sax-Zim Bog. (PHOTO: Aaron J. Brown)

Speak Your Mind

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.