The first thing you notice is the squish.
Over the summer, I trudged across a little-known stretch of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula behind Joe Rocchio, natural heritage program manager for the Washington Department of Natural Resources.
And with each step, I felt like I was about to punch through the spongy peat moss and sink into a subterranean lake.
“Some people say it’s like a waterbed,” Rocchio said. “I think it’s more like walking across pillows.”
Washington’s Olympic Peninsula is known for mossy old-growth rainforests and alpine peaks, but this squishy landscape is another natural wonder in the region. It’s called Crowberry Bog, and it’s the first of its kind to be identified in the Western U.S. outside of Alaska.
Crowberry Bog is a rare raised bog on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, shown here in an aerial video still taken in July 2024.
Cameron Nielsen / OPB
Rochio jumped up and down, sending out ripples of what looked like liquid land.
“So when you jump on it, the surface can undulate pretty far out from where I’m located,” he said.
This wet wonder has become something of an obsession for Rocchio.
“I was coming out so often that my kids started calling this daddy‘s bog,” he said.
In 2011, Rocchio identified Crowberry as a raised bog. It’s a natural phenomenon known to exist throughout Alaska and the upper Midwest — but not here.
It differs from other bogs in surprising ways. Ordinary bogs are like sunken, filled-in ponds, usually fed by streams.
Crowberry is a 40-acre mound — swollen only with rainwater — that sits nine feet higher than the surrounding land.
It’s like a big, swampy pimple.
Rocchio led me to the tree-lined edge of the bog.
“The water levels over here are actually lower than they are at the top, which is counter-intuitive,” he said. “That’s what makes Crowberry Bog so unusual. They weren’t thought to exist here.”
Everything around the bog is timber and clear-cuts, making this bog something of an ecological island.
The peat moss we’re walking on is 12 feet thick in places. It’s carpeted in yellow, pink and purple flowers and mosses, many of them rare.
Crowberry Bog on Washington's Olympic Peninsula is full of flowering plants such as this bog laurel captured in a video still in July 2024.
Cameron Nielsen / OPB
Rocchio got excited when he found what looked like a velvety green lump of moldy marshmallows.
“One of the rare species we have here at Crowberry Bog is called small capsule dung moss,” he said. “And it has a very narrow, unique ecological niche. It only grows on herbivore dung, in this case, elk dung or elk poop. And it only grows in bogs.”
This bog is one of a handful of places this moss has ever been documented across the state of Washington, Rocchio said.
Over the last century, many peat bogs like this were mined for landscaping material and other uses.
But Crowberry Bog was overlooked — and left intact.
Rocchio’s job is to work with local tribes and scientists to learn more about what’s now designated a state natural area preserve.
“You know, I’ve spent 20 years doing this kind of work, and this place still surprised me,” he said. “We really have just a cursory understanding of what’s here.”
By protecting this area, Rocchio said, the state hopes to preserve all the species here — even the ones they haven’t identified yet.
His agency is exploring ways to inventory the plants and insects in Crowberry Bog, and to look at impacts of climate change.
For those hoping to visit, the Washington Department of Natural Resources does occasionally offer educational tours to the public. Learn more on the agency’s website.
