Babies in the Bog

I would never have believed you had you told me a year ago that this summer, I would be waking up at 6:00 AM on a Sunday to go to an Estonian bog, and that it was actually my idea. To start with, I didn’t even know what a bog was a year ago. And even if I did, I’m not sure I would have found that idea remotely appealing.

You see, I’ve never been much of an outdoorsy person. I still wouldn’t say I am, although my summer in Estonia has been the most interaction with nature I’ve had in a long time, and I have even begun to learn to enjoy an occasional walk through the woods, much to the delight of my notoriously nature-y mother.

But alas, back to the bog. For those of you that are also wondering what a bog is, as I was, it’s a freshwater wetland of soft and spongy ground. See the pictures attached. Mine and my roommate’s fascination with the Estonian bog began rather morbidly, when one of my roommates was volunteering at a summer camp and the local Estonians told her an old legend — there are babies in the bog.

Allegedly, in the olden days, unwanted babies would be left to drown in the Estonian bog. But because of the wetland’s bacteria, decomposition doesn’t really happen naturally in the bog. It happens very, very slowly. So…there are babies preserved in the bog. Again, an urban (folk?) legend. They told us that going swimming in the bog or going for a walk was a popular Estonian pastime, and we should definitely go. We became obsessed with the idea, even beginning to use it as a verb — “going bogging.”

Dawn or dusk are the best times for the bog. We had originally planned to go for sunrise, and set our alarms for 4:00 AM. But our friend in charge of driving us over was not as hardcore about the bog as my roommates and I were — he’s a local, so the idea was much less exciting. So we compromised. No sunrise, but an early start nonetheless.

And so it was. On an early Sunday morning, we found ourselves at the Estonian bogs. We took a long walk, mostly in silence, or chatting about nothing. The sun was shining high and bright. We leaned down and scooped the freshwater up with our hands, drinking some and splashing it on our faces. We sat for a while, staring out into the miles of wetland and forest, not a telephone pole or a road or another person in sight.

I truly never thought I would find myself enjoying that kind of silence and stillness. I’m a city girl at heart. I love hearing the constant rumbling of cars over cobblestone roads, or the distant music from a street performer. But I think if there’s one thing that I learned in Estonia, it’s to sit in the silence.