When I come into a place where beavers live and work it’s like seeing a favorite band or beloved artist’s work up close. Of course, I admire many plants and animals but there’s an easier connection to animals that do work similar to ours. It lends itself to personification, appreciation, and a clear understanding that these are comrades on the journey.
The sheer volume of the work these animals accomplish is impressive, not to mention the dedication to their immense landscape level projects, but you hardly ever see them doing their work. It reminds me of visiting construction sites after hours with my Dad as a kid. Work (and cigarette smoke) was in the air, evidence of activity was everywhere but it was quiet and still. It was magical to come back to see more and more work had been done by these mystical invisible workers. I also remember the work sites varied. Some were a mess and dangerous while others were organized and tidy. To my eye it’s the same for beavers.
Some seem like they are simply getting it done. The lodge is built and dry but it doesn’t look like much. The dam is pretty tight but its a very utilitarian straight line. Others seem to be engaged in something almost elegant if not downright artistic. I’ve seen multi-tiered dams hundreds of feet long elegantly snaking between trees, with tree stumps, one after the other, so clean and neat not a splinter was left upright. There seems to be care applied to everything right down to the tooling on the stumps and branches.
The way I understand animals, it’s likely their choices largely have to do with function and survival but also that they have personalities. The closer I observe, photograph and draw beaver’s work the more I notice subtleties and variability. Sure, form does very likely follow function and each habitat requires different execution but still I wonder. Does one have more of an engineer’s brain and another more of an architect’s? Do they have a grand plan, a life’s work in mind. Do they feel excitement in the spring like I do. Do they look out across the pond and calculate how much longer before they will need to pack up and move on? Is it sad for them?
I used to be embarrassed that I wondered about these things but the older I get the more I see nature as a guide for better human life. The further we stray from this guide the worse it seems to be for us. It’s my hope in this time of isolation people will again be mystified by nature, appreciate it and look to it as a guide for living.
Woodland Waterworks
Walking a stream deeper into wilderness until there is an opening and a construction area.
It’s vague what exactly is being built here but it's clearly some kind of long term waterworks project. The materials are old, muddy and weathered gray here and freshly cut with bright yellow shavings scattered on the ground over there.
The project’s woodwork is finely tooled and the engineering is audaciously woven across flowing water and stretched to its leaky limits.
But where are the workers? Who is in charge? Who’s vision is this? Who approved the plans?