Category: Vertebrates

Our favorite lesson is in the tenacity of beavers.

This winter, we took one of our favorite hikes through knee-deep postholing snow to one of our favorite beaver dams. The dogs trot ahead, sniff snuffing at the path, darting to the stream that runs alongside our trail and back, and lead us as they have many times before up the trail. When we come to the great beaver dam, one that assuredly took not just years but generations of beavers to build, we stop for a snack and water, and let our daughter sit quizzically in the springtime slush. I explain to her the parts of the beaver’s home: the dam, the lodge, how they store their food. She listens while she smushes snow in her mittens, neural circuits are formed, and we pack up to start the slushy walk back to the car. A good day’s hike and lesson. A Greek proverb is dusted off in my mind, that a society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they know they shall never sit. Those beavers are good Greeks, but likely poor hoplites.

Later that spring, we return to the dam, our trail shortened by melted snow. Snow is gone from the trail, but still holding fast in the mountains above. The travel is easier, muddier, but the beaver Platonic Republic justly endures. I explain the parts of the Castorian city-state yet again, and explain what the beavers are doing now as we see fresh aspen fells. They’re collecting good sugars and preparing for their kits. Kallipolis endures, as it has, another year out of dozens of millennia, and even without a cud of pulp in sight. I wonder if beavers have oral traditions?

Time then passes as we all pass through space, and summer buds, blooms, and begins to fade. The cattle have come, grazed, trammeled, and been driven off yet again. We return to Xanadu in the early morning before the sun beats hard. We can get even closer to the dam now that the Forest gates are open, and we prepare for our adventure. My daughter looks around excitedly and drinks water from her cup. The dogs look around excitedly at all the leftover cow pies to investigate. Luckily they’ve dried.

We exit the car and make our short way to the beavers only to discover that tragedy has struck between spring and now. The dam has burst. Like the River Isen, a great work of nature has blown a hole in the waterkeep, and drained the promised pond. The shoreline has receded like a tonsure, the lodge’s secret doors exposed as if by moonlit ithildin, and the water flowing with Newtonian determination towards Great Salt Lake.

It’s shocking at first, seeing this anchor of time heaved asunder, the work of generations of beavers up and smote by spring runoff. All that labor. All those lives well-lived. Perhaps not wasted, but at least now remembered with a sigh. I sigh out as well, and explain this all to my daughter. She listens, pulls on cow-mown grasses, synapses fire, and circuits connect. We complete our hike and eventually go home.

Finally, early this fall we set off for the utopia-that-was once more. Colors have begun to change to golds and crimson. The air is more crisp; the heat more bearable. We saddle up in the toddler backpack, and see what there is to see of the beavers. We arrive to the wonders of hope and joy, and the tenacity of beavers.

The dam it appears is not abandoned. The labor of generations is honored with the restoration of the work. Not in its entirety mind you, for that will again take years and perhaps generations, but the work is underway regardless. Greek thinking again prevails. Whether by purpose or itch it matters not, but slowly the pond is regrowing. The shoreline has risen to swallow back and douse bare earth, and the water is a bit more wine-dark. I excitedly show my daughter, who excitedly is playing with my hat, the work that has happened, and the work yet to do. The beavers will not quit when allowed to do so. They are tenacious little buggers whose teeth grow forever. We take it all in and continue our hike, and eventually go back home. A new proverb pops into my head. A society grows great when we get to work and, figuratively, give a dam.

I’m Patrick Kelly and I’m Wild About Utah.
 
Credits:

Images: Beaver & Dam Image Courtesy Pixabay, Public Domain
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio with and Anderson, Howe, & Wakeman.
Text:    Patrick Kelly, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Additional Reading

Greene, Jack, I’m a Beaver Believer, Wild About Utah, December 19, 2022, https://wildaboututah.org/im-a-beaver-believer/

Bingham, Lyle, Welcoming Rodent Engineers, Wild About Utah, February 7, 2022, https://wildaboututah.org/welcoming-rodent-engineers/

Hellstern, Ron, Leave it to Beaver, Wild About Utah, July 30, 2018, https://wildaboututah.org/leave-it-to-beaver/

Leavitt, Shauna, Beaver–Helping Keep Water on Drying Lands, Wild About Utah, April 17, 2017, https://wildaboututah.org/the-beaver-helping-keep-water-on-drying-lands/

Strand, Holly, Beavers: The Original Army Corps of Engineers, Wild About Utah, April 29, 2010, https://wildaboututah.org/beavers-the-original-army-corps-of-engineers/

Goldfarb, Ben, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, Chelsea Green Publishing, March 8, 2019, https://www.amazon.com/Eager-Surprising-Secret-Beavers-Matter/dp/1603589082/ref=asc_df_1603589082/