You don’t have to fall down a rabbit hole to get to wonderland. All it takes is a short walk into Bangor and Orono’s own enchanted forest. Sure, you won’t find Cheshire cats or Mad Hatters along the way, but the Orono Bog Boardwalk has its own cast of characters – bug-eating pitcher plants, Lincoln’s sparrows, orchids and the diminutive, carnivorous sundew, an innocent-looking plant that lures unsuspecting insects with its crown of sticky threads.

As you step out of the Bangor City Forest and onto the boardwalk, it becomes clear that you’ve entered an otherworldly place. The air feels cooler, more moist. The greens become greener, the quiet quieter.

“You really feel like you’re getting into a pristine environment where the hand of humans is minimal,” said Ronald Davis, the boardwalk’s project director. “This is a place to go to be reflective, to be quiet, just to enjoy the natural beauty. That’s what the majority of people who come here seek out.”

As the wooden-plank path, which floats on a giant sponge of peat and sphagnum moss, winds through a corridor of tall tamarack and black spruce trees, the landscape unfolds. Tall becomes small as you walk deeper into the bog, and at its center, you feel like a giant wandering through a dwarf forest of the most intense green. Peat moss forms a cushy, velvety carpet underfoot, and in the golden light of afternoon, tufts of cotton grass float on the breeze.

“They look like dancers to me,” Davis said.

The wetland forest, which covers about a square mile of land in Orono and Bangor, becomes less fertile near the middle. This is why the trees and shrubs that dot the landscape are so small, even though many are older than trees on the bog’s periphery.

“It’s a virgin forest,” Davis said. “I don’t know of any other virgin forests, other than on peat land, in the Bangor area. The oldest trees in the Bangor area are to be found in places like this, even though they’re tiny.”

Davis, a biology professor at the University of Maine, has been intrigued by the bog’s unusual landscape for decades. Over the course of more than 20 years, he and other professors took countless groups of students on mucky walks through the bog. Several years ago, Davis noticed that these field trips were starting to take their toll on the bog’s surface.

“I’m very much interested in conserving wetlands,” he said. “I thought if I could educate people about beauty and nature and things in these wetlands people would be more interested in protecting them.”

So he started to think about building a boardwalk on the site, which would allow more people to enjoy the bog’s rare plants and animals. Two years ago, his student Justine Stadler researched the permitting requirements, and it became clear the project could work. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, city officials, donations from businesses and individuals and state and national organizations, the plan became a reality, and the 4,200-foot, wheelchair-accessible boardwalk opened to the public in June.

A series of interpretive stations helps visitors identify the plants and animals they encounter on the walk. These signs also explain the makeup of the bog, which looks like a bullseye from the air, with a raised “island” in the center, and lower land at the edge. A docent is stationed at the entrance to the bog, as well, to answer any questions people may have.

Talks and guided tours take place every Saturday throughout the summer, and an intern or docent is available to lead schoolchildren, senior citizens and other groups through the wetland walk.

Whether you’ve been there once or a dozen times, there’s always a sense of discovery on the boardwalk. The landscape changes dramatically throughout the seasons. In the fall, the tamaracks turn a brilliant shade of gold, which stands out against the dark needles of the black spruce and the bright red foliage of huckleberry plants. In the spring, rhodora bushes explode in a mass of pink and violet blooms. Early spring snowmelt causes the boardwalk to float over a torrent of water near the entrance. June is a good month for bird watching, and the orchids are in full bloom in July. In the wintertime, snowshoe hares hop across the bog, so while you may not find Alice in this wonderland, you could see a white rabbit.

“A lot of people are repeaters,” Davis said. “They keep coming back through the seasons.”

And why wouldn’t they? As the weather turns cooler and summer turns to fall, the landscape keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.

Kristen Andresen can be reached at kandresen@bangordailynews.net.

The Orono Bog Boardwalk is open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. daily through the end of August; 8 a.m-5 p.m. starting in September. The boardwalk is wheelchair-accessible, but dogs and bicycles are prohibited. For information, call 581-2980 or visit www.oronobogwalk.com (Ron Davis will be away in September, but more information is available on the Web site.)