Yesterday was a mysterious day but it started when Chris Carr posted that ‘tree-dragging’ video to the beaver management forum. I suddenly remembered that Moses had shot similar footage years ago of our father beaver, and that it used to be in the footage I used to present when I gave a talk. But over the years, what what with the documentaries and new footage it got pushed out.
Did I still have the footage?
If you had a great deal more patience I would explain that Moses shot in those early days in an ancient format that had to be converted before being used on my mac which is what I use for presentations. But there isn’t room to store past presentations on said mac so its on an external seagate hardrive. Could I find that footage in a past presentation?
Oh no I could not, not until the very last place I looked of course. And then just a sliver of it. I despaired. It as such great footage. A little dark I remember but amazing because Moses shot it directly by paying a friendly homeless man to hold the spotlight. No trail cams for Martinez beavers! I could never get it back from Moses that would be like finding a particular ant in a decades old ant colony. If I couldn’t find it it was gone forever. Leaving just a memory.
In desperation I looked again at the fragment wondering what it was and when it was shot. March 16, 2008. Damn that as a long, long time ago. For the very first time I saw and option on my mac which said “revert clip to original” and I almost laughed. I had deleted that clip many many times before Obama was president. How could the original footage ever still be somewhere findable? Just on a lark I clicked ‘revert’ anyway.
A message came up that said the entire clip was 15 minutes and would take time to recover. Okay I agreed hopelessly, certain it could never be found.
I was wrong.
Not only was the entire clip lurking somewhere on my computer the whole time, but footage I had never even SEEN before sprung forth. That third log Dad hauls is new to me, also recovered was some family bonding footage I’ll share later. Dad was using these three logs to work on the third dam, which is also featured beautifully in the lost footage. I have zero idea how it happened, but I am grateful for the mystery and was eager to share.
My old mac is one of the seven wonders.
A second mystery came from an invitation to participate in MVSD Moorhen Marsh’s reopening day in May. I had some hint about the event a while ago when someone from Orange county emailed to verify my contact info for the event. And then another stranger contacted me from Danville with details. Nowhere was I told to ‘save the date’ or notified about the event until yesterdays invite. This to an event barely more than a month away and falling three weeks after Earth day. The invite said that for a mere 20 dollars I could register to participate and would receive a tent and table.
Now I had already promised our friends at wildbirds unlimited that we would be at their mothers day booth that day, and I would imagine that lots of folks they wanted to invite would be similarly committed. (like native birds, audubon and bird rescue). Obviously MVSD had hired a firm to coordinate the event that wasn’t exactly on the event circuit, so besides being very, very envious that they had event planning funds, I wondered why they hadn’t asked earlier? As a woman who for the last 11 years had planned beaver festivals, and for 7 years helped plan earth day events, I was confused about some things.
- Why the late notice?
- How was MVSD providing tents and tables? were they renting them? And from whom?
- How had they secured Doug McConnell as Emcee?
- How could they afford to pay an event planner? And if they were paying why didn’t they know about likely participant scheduling constraints?
Being as it takes me almost an entire year to plan the festival, and has always taken 3-4 months to contact and secure exhibits for the event I’m understandably curious.
You mean there are people you can PAY to do this?
