I’m going to make you all cry now. Well not me, Patti Smith. The Vermont “me” – way more graceful and without the sarcasm. She’s going to make you cry with this beautiful column about the death of her heroic ambassador beaver, Willow. You’ll know, when you read her elegiac prose, how much I thought of the death of our own mother beaver loo, lo, these nine years ago. It takes the courage of a matriarch to change a woman’s life apparently. Mom was the one who decided to live near us in Martinez. And Willow was the first that allowed her life to be touched by Patti. My heart grieves for her loss, and ours.
On the night of December 3, I broke a trail through the deep fresh snow to the shores of Sodom Pond. It was not the tough, uphill work that made me immune to the beauty of the moonlit forest; I was going to say good-bye to my old friend Willow.
Some of you met Willow when I began writing about her in this column nearly twelve years ago. If so, you will know that she was the first volunteer when I decided I would like to meet a beaver. She has been sharing her life with me (and you?) ever since. This fall found her settled in a new pond with Henry, mate number five, and Gentian, their 18-month-old kit.
Willow’s life was remarkable on two counts. As a beaver ambassador, she welcomed many visitors over the years. In this capacity, she played a small role in awakening humanity to the tremendous role beavers play in making habitat and in holding cooling water on a heating planet.
Willow also had an unusually long life. I have speculated about the superpowers that kept her alive while so many other beavers disappeared. She has been blind in one eye for the past five years and has had the disheveled, bony appearance of advanced age for nearly as long. I suspect she was close to the maximum age for a beaver. The record for a beaver in captivity is 23 years. Beavers in the wild seldom attain half that age.
I wish I could say something that would soften this article for you. But I can’t. All I can do is remember this, the night after we lost mom and my long sniffling watch to see if her kits were cared for, I filmed these the night after mom died.
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In late November, after the first snow of the year, I heard a beaver’s tail slap warning when I arrived at the pond. Henry made a brief, nervous appearance but swam away again. Willow did not show up. I tried not to worry, but Henry’s anxiety was contagious.
The next night, I headed to the pond again hopeful that I would find the wayward beaver and prepared to search if I did not. Only Henry came when I called. I wandered downstream to previous ponds and back on the far side of the brook. I found no recent sign of Willow, but many reminders of the hours spent on those shores. When I arrived at the far side of their home pond, I could see young Gentian out on the ice processing a tree they had felled. From that vantage, I also saw the tracks of a bear. The bear had walked across the slushy surface of the pond the previous night and pawed at the roof of one of the beavers’ temporary lodges.
Willow was nowhere to be found but the next morning she came back to look closer at the bear tracks. I know, I’m crying too. And remembering this.
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The next morning I set myself the grim task of determining her fate. If I could not find evidence of a predator attack, I would assume that Willow had achieved the near-impossible—dying of old-age in nature. Frost crystals gleamed on the sedges by the pond, and a light skim of ice crystallized into snowflake patterns over the open water. I followed the beavers’ trails up the hillside again. I saw no evidence of predation. I returned to the place where the bear tracks left the scene. The tracks continued up the hill, went over a stone wall and up stone steps to a cellar hole. Bear feet left impressions along the edge of the foundation. At a corner, it looked like the bear paused to goof around with a branch since the tracks went back and forth, and a groove appeared beside them. As the tracks continued into the woods, the groove went with them. The bear was dragging something. I knew what I would find.
The pile of sawdust under a skim of ice looked like bedding from a squirrel’s nest at first. When it registered as Willow’s last meal, I dropped to my knees and howled my sorrow to the still forest. The depth of grief is a measure of love, so I welcome it. I loved that old beaver.
A week later, I made my sad return trek to the pond. The section of ice near the entrance to the lodge was slushy, and I made an opening with my ski pole. I called Henry and waited for many anxious minutes before I heard the gurgles that announced his approach. He rose to the surface wearing a cap of ice and then lumbered up the sloughing snowbank to beach himself, in magnificent portliness, for a treat. In his company by the moonlit pond, I found my farewells had already been said. The night demanded attention to what was there, not what was missing. I could feel Willow’s presence in Gentian, snoozing in the lodge nearby. Could she share her mother’s remarkable traits? If she does, she will live a long life — and she will share it with us.
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I will never forget the wrenching feeling in Lily pond reading as Hope watches her beloved beaver die, I don’t know why, but women mourn beaver matriarchs and that’s just how it happens. There is of course always the fear of what will happen to the children. But I’m sure you know they were cared for. That night we all commented on how the yearling was accepting the kit for a back ride. We rarely saw those two apart in the coming month.
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Patti, we are so grateful you allowed this beaver to touch your life. Your readers hearts and minds were forever opened because of it.
And thank you, Mom, and Willow.
Lastly; the Hubermans
Hans.
Papa
He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do – the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, “I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.” Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places. This one was set out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested.
Markus Zusak: The Book Thief
