Hope in the Bog
That used to be a bog, and that used to be a bog, and that,” JJ Apodaca says, pointing to neatly mowed ditches as we wind through the rural valleys of the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains in his field truck. To the casual observer, the landscape looks… normal, dotted with farmhouses and livestock. But not if you’re a bog turtle.
“Historically, before these valleys were drained for agriculture, this landscape would have been covered in bogs,” Apodaca says. As I learn later when I walk through one, bogs in this part of the country are grassy, flooded meadows fed by springs.
