Beavers
I didn't have any posts in August and September due to the volume of travel I had for work. Now I'm trying to ease back into writing here with a few shorter posts I have planned to round out the year, but I also have several drafts for longer posts in my "Knowing" series that I hope to finish and publish sometime in the next six months or so.
When I was growing up, we regularly visited my grandparents farm. They had a stream flowing through their property, and for many years there were beavers making their home at a certain bend in the stream. It wasn't far from the farmhouse–a ten-minute walk perhaps–but it was out of sight, beyond the pastures and through the woods a bit. So it felt like a mini-adventure to go see the beaver pond, often accompanied by an aunt. I don't recall if we ever managed to see the beavers themselves there–although I've since spotted some many times out paddling or hiking in various places–but their handiwork was everywhere: chomp-marked stumps and felled logs, the dam, the lodge, dug-out channels. Very clever and industrious little creatures, and I've admired them ever since.
This summer we got the outside of our house refreshed with a new paint job, including the doors. To complete the look I wanted and to add a unique touch, I had the idea to install a door-knocker. The traditional animal for such things is the lion, but I thought that an animal that I feel some affinity for would give it more of a personal flavour; plus, beavers use their tails to make an audible alert, which seemed very fitting for a door-knocker.
A Google Image Search helped me find something that matched what I was envisioning. This was from an eBay store by a West Coast artist named Mary Ann Dabritz. I'm very pleased with how it looks on my door:
Separately from shopping for cast brass hardware, I've been getting into some metal-casting channels on YouTube. I enjoy seeing how things are made and the skill and creativity people bring to their crafts. The following video is a great example; I appreciate how this artisan incorporates 3d-printing into his workflow (which is the avenue by which I found his channel initially):
Another great instance of beaver-related art that I've encountered this year is a children's book called What Goes On Inside a Beaver Pond? This describes the activities that beavers (and other wetland species) do throughout the course of a year. It is set in the Pleasant Valley wildlife sanctuary in Western Massachusetts. I've previously noted that illustration quality is a key factor in the appeal of children's books, and good illustrations are also extremely helpful for any kind of guidebook about the natural world. The illustrator of this work, Carrie Shryock, did a great job on both of those levels. Here's a couple of pages as an example:
For adults interested in beavers, I can recommend that book Eager by Ben Goldfarb, which I've reviewed before.
2025 has been a notable year for beaver-related history. It marks the end, after 355 years, of the Hudson's Bay Company. It made a fortune off of beaver pelts and had vast territorial holdings before its more recent embodiment as a department store.
I'll wrap this post up with one more piece of beaver art. One of the places I was travelling for my job this summer was Clinton, Iowa. The downtown there wasn't much (although it did have a couple of good large antique stores), but it had some nice sculptures of Mississippi wildlife, including this one of a beaver:
