The open bog at Volo Bog State Natural Area provides a sense of calm and peace. (Sheryl DeVore / Lake County News-Sun)

Standing on the boardwalk at Volo Bog, I enter a rare world. It’s quiet, for one, and it’s teeming with plants found much more frequently much farther north.

This is my go-to place, especially in the waning summer near my birthday when seeking the healing power of nature.

To me, it’s a birthright to find a place of peace in nature. Luckily, I work from home, which enables me to get out to these places in the middle of the week on a morning when youngsters are in school and adults are at work.

What makes Volo Bog State Natural Area special is that it is the only open-water quaking bog in Illinois. Bogs are products of the Glacial Age. Acid builds up in the water because there’s no ground water source. Certain rare plant species have adapted to the mostly oxygen-free conditions.

Along the narrow boardwalk, the vegetation seems to swallow me like the whale that swallowed Gepetto when he was searching for Pinocchio.

Here sphagnum moss grows abundantly. You can see it just below the surface of the boardwalk.

Momu Mosemark Museum in Denmark calls sphagnum moss a prehistoric refrigerator because of its preservative properties. Wooden barrels of butter and cheese have been found in bogs in England and Scotland, likely placed there to keep them fresh and usable.

The body of a man discovered in a Denmark bog in 1950 was determined to be at least 2,000 years old. Yet you could actually see his facial features.

Along the boardwalk, cinnamon and sensitive ferns grow in the moss. A green heron squawks, then flies out of the vegetation. Pitcher plants grow here, too. This plant can’t get nutrition from the acidic waters, so it has a cuplike feature that holds water and drowns insects, which then serve as the plant’s nutrients.

When I reach the center of the bog, it seems like a hidden place, a secret garden, an oasis of blue, calming water. This is not just a pond. It is the center of a bog surrounded by tamarack trees. It is like being transported to somewhere in Minnesota or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where native vegetation is so different from that which grows in Illinois.

I get a sense of timelessness thinking of past glacial ages and that this remnant is still here. A twelve-spotted skimmer dragonfly flits by. An American goldfinch utters its sweet summertime songs and “per-chick-o-ree” calls. My breathing slows as nature seems to enter my being.

I want to capture that sensation, put it in a bottle and bring it with me everywhere.

If we spend a long enough time outside in nature, we might be able to do just that, or at least improve our mental and physical health. In fact, the European Center for Environment & Human Health researched 20,000 people and learned that those who spend at least two hours weekly in nature “were substantially more likely to report good health and psychological well-being than those who don’t,” according to an article published by the Yale School of Environment.

Though I take many nature hikes with friends and family, my sense of well-being often comes from the wild when I am alone. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it is because as a human with a defined timeline, I’m standing in the midst of flora that has been here before I was born and will be here after I die.

It’s not easy to find a place like the open water of Volo Bog in the greater Chicagoland where you can be a lone, quiet and contemplative. There are some other spots, especially in nearby McHenry County, for example Boger Bog found off a winding road near the town of Bull Valley. And there’s the Reed-Turner Woodland in Long Grove where gentian bloom in a small, quiet grassland in late summer.

Go find your place in nature. Stand alone with the wild and let peace fill your soul.

Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the Chicago Tribune and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to sheryldevorewriter@gmail.com