The horrors of Texas have been making me remember this passage:

In her 2008 book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, author Terry Tempest Williams writes about her two-week stint with prairie dog researchers:

“In 1950, government agents proposed to get rid of prairie dogs on some parts of the Navajo Reservation in order to protect the roots of sparse desert grasses and thereby maintain some marginal grazing for sheep. The Navajo elders objected, insisting, ‘If you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.’ The amused officials assured the Navajo that there was no correlation between rain and prairie dogs and carried out their plan.

The outcome was surprising only to the federal officials. The desert near Chilchinbito, Arizona, became a virtual wasteland. Without the ground-turning process of the burrowing animals, the soil became solidly packed, unable to accept rain. Hard pan.

The result: fierce runoff whenever it rained. What little vegetation remained was carried away by flash floods and a legacy of erosion.”

Three years before Martinez celebrated it’s first beaver festival, Durham Carolina marked it’s quietly quirky beaver-saving pride event.

The Queen Beaver Pageant has since been a joyous, campy, and watershed friendly event celebrated every year. During this time it has ranged from more or less dangerous to be a drag queen in North Carolina, and coincidentally more or less dangerous to be a beaver in North Carolina. But no matter, the contest has persevered.

A moment in Durham: ‘Free to Beave’

At the edge of Duke Park, families unfold their lawn chairs as a warm June sun steams off the morning rain. Local singer Juliana Finch strums tunes about online dating, protesting, and Pride, while nearby, the Poetry Fox taps away on a typewriter as kids dressed as beavers call out words. Paper fans flap. Loco Pops drip. This is the Beaver Queen Pageant, Durham’s long-running celebration of spoof, sass, and beaver-based activism.

Themed “Free to Beave,” this year’s event opens with a burst of camp chaos starting with the intros of contestants. Ina Gnawten wears a long tail on which sits a platter full of cocktails. Madam Raspbootyn pops out of a Russian nesting doll that matches her red and blue outfit. Lady Violet Beaverton is in a Bridgerton-like dress covered in white and red roses. Finally, Captain Ellerbe & Bucky walk out together as a dynamic duo, peeling off Hawaiian shirts to reveal superhero costumes. 

I’m so old that I can remember how shocked our fellow Worth-A-Dam champion Lory was to visit her grandaughter in Raleigh and find another beaver festival! She quickly realized this one was a little different than ours. But over the years they partnered with a watershed group and got a little more interested in actual beavers too.

Right before the talent act, rain clouds roll in, and a quick downpour halts the activities. Yet no one leaves. Attendees huddle under tents and trees, cheering every time the clouds pass. As the judges are introduced, the audience whoops as if rock stars entered the park. One girl wearing a beaver tail yells “We love you!” after each judge gets introduced.

The talent portion begins with a mock cooking demo of “Beef Bourgnawnion” by contestant Ina Gnawten, each ingredient met with dramatic “oohs” and “ahhs” from the crowd. Kids dash towards the stage, parents sometimes chasing them and sometimes not. One boy in beaver makeup and a small tail yells, “I’m gonna be a beaver when I grow up.”

How could you not love this festival and that little boy?

Beneath the camp lies a deeper current. The first Beaver Queen Pageant sprang up in April of 2005, a year after a group of neighbors protested the planned removal of a den of beavers from a nearby wetland. The community saved the beavers and in doing so, started a tradition. What began as something small became an annual celebration of nature, neighborhood spirit, and the right to be as ridiculous as possible. Today, the pageant partners with Keep Durham Beautiful, with part of the proceeds going toward local conservation. 

Now that I didn’t know. It started with actual beavers. What does that mean for Martinez?

If you ask Richard Mullinax, better known as Beverly Woody, the pageant’s first winner, none of this even felt possible back in 2005. He was roped into the very first pageant at the last minute, when only two other contestants signed up.“It was the high 90s. There were like 50 people, and crickets chirping as the sun went down,” he remembered. “I only agreed to do it if I didn’t win.”

However, he did win. Beverly Woody was crowned the first Beaver Queen following an amazing clog dancing routine. “You know,” Mullinax says with a shrug, “it’s classic Beaver Queen energy. It is normal to expect the unexpected.” 

He now returns year after year as a judge.

Despite another rain delay, the event powers through. “You can’t plan for anything at the pageant,” says Cary Winslow, grabbing her strawberries and cream LocoPop. “That’s kind of the point.”

The voting booth line starts to get busy with many attendees voting for their favorite contestant. Votes cost $5 each, and attendees who vote 20 times or more can take home a custom beaver tail. “All I want now is to leave with a homemade beaver tail, ” says Anne Prichard, visiting from California but proudly cheering on contestants as they make their way through the crowd.

The crowd cheers as the final tally is announced: $6,000 has been raised.

“Your 2025 Beaver Queen is Lady Violet Beaverton!” the emcee says. Her Regency-inspired dance, both refined and risqué, caught the eyes of the judges and the votes of the crowd. With her feathered fan waving and a smile spreading across her face, she is crowned and showered with compliments from the crowd.

Well, we take our beavers a bit more seriously here in Martinez. But as we all know by now, there’s no wrong way to Beeve.

Lovely to see stories like this from Colorado. They have truly signed on to the believer team.

Salomone: Benefits of beaver ponds

Beaver ponds are found throughout the Colorado High Country. Toss a lightweight fly rod in your vehicle and hit some High Country roads. Any short hike along a mountain stream will lead to a beaver pond at some point. Most roads inevitably parallel the course of a small watershed. Keep your eyes open. When you see the trickle of water pan out beyond the stream banks, you’ve found one.

The fish I have found in beaver ponds are surprising. Brook trout are the most commonly associated with beaver ponds, but rainbow, cutthroat and brown trout can be found, too. I have only caught two tiger trout, a brook trout and brown trout hybrid, but one of them came from a high altitude beaver pond.

Shallow beaver ponds are found in meadows where small streams are dammed, creating a pocket of water. Depending on the dam, the water can get deep, but that’s not usually the case. Long beaver ponds occur in bigger streams where the main channel is obstructed. The stoppage creates a body of water that pushes back up the stream channel and broadens the watershed. Long beaver ponds are deep and provide critical winter holding water for fish and beavers. This type of beaver pond will have ledges where the original stream channel existed before the inundation from beaver activity.