Beavers

I wrote in the last post about seeing work the beavers were up to. What I had seen then, a week ago, was their work to fell a couple of pretty large trees next to the stream at the bottom of our driveway near where the stream crosses under Gulf Road. The trees are still standing, partially gnawed, but a couple of days later, I noticed that the beavers had begun damming the culvert on our side of the road. Then I found two dams they had built a little ways upstream, one of which was creating a real lower pond between the big pond and the road. Then I saw where they were getting a lot of their material. There’s a copse of saplings on our side of the stream that Jay had talked about clearing, and the beavers have gotten through nearly a third of the work the work for him.

The water rose gradually on our side of the culvert all week as the beavers filled in more and more of it with mud and sticks. When Aviva and I walked by yesterday, Sunday, there was still an opening at the top of the culvert, but the water was now only about two feet below the level of the road. I had called it in to the town’s road department on Friday, but just left a message on their machine. Last night we had a lot of rain, and this morning when I left home heading for the gym the culvert was completely blocked and a small river was running across the end of our driveway, which dips slightly before joining Gulf Road. When I got to town I called the road department again, but getting their machine again, I called Jay to let him know what was up. He told me that a guy from the road department had arrived with a backhoe just after I left (I had actually passed him on Gulf, but didn’t know where he was headed) and cleared it out. Sure enough, when I got home the culvert was clear and the water was running under Gulf instead of across our driveway. This is surely not the end of it. Not with a beaver.

Our pond in Amenia had an active beaver lodge most of the time we lived there. The beavers were always damming the outflow, the little stream that ran just to the side of the beach Dad had created for us by having sand trucked in to cover the mud. In the early years, Dave Bierce did battle with them, pulling their work apart every couple of days and cursing them. I can still see him, shirtless, standing in the water, tugging at the latest additions to their dam. In later years it was Pete Kniffen’s turn, and at the end of our family’s stewardship, Tamar took over. By then we had built a little bridge across the stream right near where it flowed out of the pond and the beavers built their dam under it where it was most awkward to get at to pull it apart. They built and Tamar tore it out over and over. Beavers are both industrious and not easily discouraged.

Since it was never my responsibility to undo their work, it was easy for me to retain the friendly admiration I had always had for them. I had a lovely, illustrated book about beavers. It included a charming cut-away drawing of a typical lodge, showing the underwater entrances and tunnels, and the open, air-filled central chamber where the beavers raised their young in relative safety. It looked like the loveliest and most cleverly constructed home. The drawing let me imagine the life going on under the pile of sticks that constituted the lodge on our pond, which otherwise would have seemed quite ordinary, haphazard, and dull.

Despite my affection, the beavers were a real threat to the Amenia pond. If they had succeeded in raising the water level, the water would have overflowed the man-made southern bank of the pond, very likely causing it to collapse and sending the pond water flooding down towards our road. But despite the threat they created and the work required to prevent serious damage, we mostly loved the beavers and were fascinated by them. Mom, returning from a twilight swim, would report that she had seen them, perhaps dragging saplings to the lodge, perhaps slapping their tails on the water in warning. They are sleek and graceful in the water. You see the ripples of their wake first, and follow the wake to the head and perhaps the back and tail of the beaver creating it.

We spent so much time watching the natural world, thinking about it, learning about it, talking about it. For me, life on Sunnyhill is a return to the habits of mind I learned in Amenia. Pay attention, even to little things. Don’t be in a hurry, watch for as long as you can. Be quiet. See yourself as part of the web of life, not above it. Think about what must have happened before and what might happen next. Be industrious. Be persistent. Until I went off to college, Amenia, under my mother’s tutelage, was my most important school.

It has rained again most of the day today, and now the rain is mixed with snow. The wind is throwing the rain and snow against the windows with considerable force and noise. We four are snug by the fire. And I imagine the beavers are snug inside their lodge, plotting their next move to block the culvert.