Guess who flew in from Kentucky yesterday, drove around San Fran, made the necessary pilgrimage to Pixar to have his photo taken there before stopping in Martinez on the way to the Wild and Scenic Film festival? Ian Timothy and his very sweet parents Karen and Joel walked around the dams and swapped stories of urban beavers, watched a night heron in the trees and generally impressed the lot of us.
It is hard to describe how much this meeting meant to those involved. We have become such fans of Ian’s work that he has almost achieved hollywood status. Ian was one of my first ‘beaver contacts’ way back during the fight with the city, and as he’s achieved greater and grander things, I have watched his skills and talents grow and gradually came to imagine that ‘Twig’ was probably just a vehicle for his remarkable art and that he probably wasn’t really committed to ‘beavers’ per se but rather exploring his craft and telling a story.
Yesterday, he excitedly talked about other beaver colonies he watches in the Ohio River, noting the changes in habitat they made, while his parents emphasized how important the Martinez Beaver story was for him, and how closely he followed it. I realized that we were every bit as important to him as he was to us, and it was a strange feeling to think that our story had cast such a big shadow on this talented young man, who will obviously accomplish so much in his life.
The meeting was strangest in it’s failure to be at all strange. We didn’t feel like we were meeting newcomers, but rather welcoming old friends. There wasn’t an huge California-Kentucky road block and we could easily have taken them home to dinner if there was more time. The other thing that impressed me about Ian was that he was so NORMAL! If I imagined a shy, socially awkward, asperger’s-type teen who worked obsessively with clay because real life was much too challenging, I was entirely delighted to find out that Ian has a natural, easy personal style with an even pacing and great smile. His parents were warmly genuine and seemed to truly respect their son’s gifts while still treating him like a son. I loved hearing about how his work took up space in their home, in their lives, so that ‘Twig’ and ‘Drake’ were almost a part of the family. Of course it made me think about how much space the beavers have taken up in my own life leaving a trail of evidence in almost every room of my home from the door knocker to the back porch.
Here’s the gang with Ian at the tile bridge, (imagine Cheryl there too taking the photo)! I repeated to Ian and his parents how profoundly touched I was when he included mom’s tail notch in episode 6. Even now as I think of it my eyes blur. The Martinez Beaver story has taken us so far and brought us so many new friends. This year alone we’ve had visitors from Utah (Mary O’brien of the Grand Canyon Land Trust) Washington (Amanda Parrish and Joe Cannon of the Lands Council) and now Kentucky!
Thank you so much for finding time to stop by Martinez on your glorious adventure and I hope you rock their world in Nevada City! Apparently the film festival will travel to Louisville eventually and Ian has already been asked to speak at the event!
For some reason this poem has been lurking in my head all morning and I will have to finish this post with its feathered weight.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost
