A Return To Dyken Pond - Part 3

I was hiking the Long Trail within the Dyken Pond Nature Preserve in Grafton, New York with four of my dogs. We'd explored a marsh and I got to taste a wild Cranberry. But soon enough we were back on the trail through the woods:

The trail continued to skirt the marsh and as we approached its southern end, I decided on another foray out into the wetland. The dogs, of course, are always up for any new adventure:

My feet had stayed nice and dry at the northern end of the marsh, but were beginning to get quite wet as we tromped around in its southern end. Indeed, there was open water nearby:

Fergus and the puppies wanted to keep as dry as possible:

But Seamus, true to form, waded right out into the water:

"Follow me, Clover. It's too wet around here. Let's go back to a dryer place:"

My feet may have been taking on water, but I took a moment to point my camera northward to capture the beauty of the marsh. We had lots of trail yet to explore and I'll post more tomorrow:

We exited the marsh and followed the trail through the woods to the wetland's southern end where the moving water was reborn as a forest stream. There was a plank there which led us across what many decades ago must surely have been the beaver dam which began this ecological progression. I imagine that for decades, the beaver pond was filled with the standing trunks of dead trees. Then the sphagnum moss moved in and began filling in the pond. Eventually, the trees long dead and mostly gone, the peat bog was solid enough for the cranberry and other plants to gain a foothold. But the dogs cared nothing for such speculation. Walking the plank was for them another opportunity to play: