The Dryden Kuser Natural Area — a rare high-elevation Atlantic white-cedar swamp near the summit.
Just north of the monument lies one of the strangest and most precious spots in the whole park — the Dryden Kuser Natural Area, and at its heart, a bog. Now a swamp, a bog, is the last thing you'd expect to find near the top of a mountain — water runs downhill, after all. But up in a shallow basin on this ridge sits a cold, boggy wetland of Atlantic white cedar, one of the highest-elevation cedar swamps of its kind anywhere.
It's a little pocket of the far north stranded up here — mossy, still, and ancient-feeling, with plants that belong hundreds of miles away. A boardwalk trail loops through it if you'd like to walk it, quiet and cool even in summer. It's the kind of place that reminds you a mountaintop isn't just a view — it's a world of its own, with weather and life all its own. Worth a look, and worth protecting, which is exactly why it's set aside.
Photo: Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA · CC BY 2.0
