I haven’t found an hour when I don’t love a bog. Recently, after a night of counting rare caterpillars in Borth in Mid Wales (they come out only after dark), walking back to the car under the glow of a flower moon, I wondered if 2am was my new favourite. I felt very safe, held by the bog’s softness, and everyone that was out at that hour seemed to have a sense of humour. I met a nightjar hopping around on the ground, pretending, I think, to be a frog.
But there is also something about the humidity of a languid afternoon on a bog, when everything slows and fat bumbles hum, that is surprisingly good. I have done freezing horizontal rain and thick, cold-to-your-bones fog and wind so howling that I couldn’t think. All of those were hard, but I did come away feeling truly alive.
