Any other wilderness experience is usually a bonus. The Silver Lake area of southwestern Clinton County, inside the Adirondack Park but easily accessible and lightly used by the public, offers a variety of outdoor experiences within a one-mile radius of the lake itself. We arrived about 9 a.m., our goal to check out the bog, then climb Silver Lake Mountain. The trail begins in a northern hardwood forest. This quickly descends into the bog, which is actually a combination bog and northern cedar swamp.
Bogs are more acidic than swamps, and are low in oxygen, so decomposition takes place slowly.
Bogs were used in ancient times as burial places by some groups, and bodies unearthed centuries later from these wetlands have been so well preserved that autopsies could be done and the cause of death identified. Early on, the cedar swamp dominates. Karalyn and I walked through this section on the plank, handicapped-accessible boardwalk suspended over the wetland. Along the way, we stopped at numbered learning stations, indexed in a brochure we picked up at the sign-in, and coded with each station. At No. 8, about halfway down the 0.5-mile boardwalk, we paused to observe pitcher plants, those insectivorous oddities that give off a pleasant odor to attract bugs.