The Real Purpose

I didn't come here to look at the birds and I didn't come here to look at the new beaver dams and lodges, which went up in the last two months.  Of course, I would do all of these things, a fortuitous by-product of my real purpose, but not the real purpose.


I was here just four days ago.  I come here five or six times each year between April and the freezing in, so two trips in four days is a bit of compression.  If I lived closer, I would probably spend most of my paddling days in this swamp.

Wood Duck and Kingfisher

Four days ago the water was high when I put in at the lower end of this stretch.  Today, I start up at the top and the water still looks high, very high in fact.  I suspect another new beaver dam not too far down river.

The water is deep and dark, the bottom rarely appearing.  The narrow river is wider than normal and the "step-overs" - bank to bank logs - are either paddled over or end run.   A half mile in I begin to flush wood ducks and mallards.  I spot a large hawk and one kingfisher.  But best of all, it is a good and easy paddle in the deeper waters. 

When I get near the only bridge, I can gauge that the water is about two feet deeper than it was four days ago.  It is a by-product of a strong storm of heavy wind and rain.  I also wish that I had brought a bow paddler with...another by-product of that storm is that there are strands of spider web and spiders everywhere and I am constantly brushing them from my face.  No doubt they are rebuilding their traps.  I paddled over three beaver dams without noticing them...high water.

There is something about finding new beaver dams and lodges that buoys the soul.  Particularly at this time when we have an immature brat running our country, corporations trying to cash in on the last of the oil reserves before climate change kills us and threats of warfare...so much shortsighted stupidity.  Finding a new beaver dam and lodge demonstrates to me that some parts of the world go on functioning as they should.  Beaver build dams to protect their lodges and territories.  Wood ducks take cover in the flooded shrubs, woodpeckers feed and nest in the flooded trees, fish lay eggs, survive and do better in the deeper and cooler waters.  No matter what is going on in the inhumane human world, the beaver do what beaver do.  The marsh grows, the trees get flooded and die, the marsh silts in, the marsh becomes a meadow, the beaver move to another place, the meadow becomes a forest, and that is continuing is comforting.