Sensory Fieldwork

My friend Adam Welz, a South African naturalist and journalist, identified fish crows flying around an island in mid-lake when he was visiting our cabin on the Saranacs in the summer of 2012. I had never noticed them. He had kept up enough with his ornithology to recognize their thinner, reedier caw than our common crow, and knew that the smaller species was working its way north from habitats in southeastern U.S. salt flats and tidal waters. I had noted plenty of other signs of global change in the local ecosystem by then, but the fish crows, as something newly arrived rather than disappearing, drove it home.

But they were just an indicator of the global upheaval. What could I think of that, besides the headline changes—the Adirondack Park Agency, the Northway, the Olympics—most characterized specific Adirondack change over the last 50 years?

I became conscious of the Adirondacks as a distinct