A naturalist’s habitat
ho’s there?” The opening line of “Hamlet” was the question my wife, Debbie, and I asked ourselves upon buying a sagging old camp and 18 Adirondack acres along the Saranac River. The property was ecologically diverse. It included upland and wetland, as well as northern hardwood forest, riverbank, floodplain, stranded oxbow ponds, and a mossy, boggy, all but impenetrable stand of spruce, fir and tamarack. As naturalists, we were quick to wonder. What lived there? What sort of plants grew, and what sorts of animals, fungi and
