Yesterday we drove into the high sierras looking for fall color. Instead of finding color we found BEAVERS! I’m posting photos today because they’re beautiful and it’s my birthday. This is lush, gently inclined meadow, and its covered in willow in the Hope Valley. I can’t imagine a better place to be a beaver – and these guys have been busy. We counted 6 dams. I’m sure there are a dozen.
The longest dam spanned nearly 75 feet and was three feet high. But I’m partial to the curvey one myself.
It’s all very fitting, not only because it’s my birthday but also because our favorite habitat 15 miles up at the Hung-a-lei-ti tribe was abandoned or destroyed in the past years.
In addition to willow there are lilies and berries for hungry beavers to eat. We didn’t find the lodge yet, but as the winter is creeping in soon, there must be a good stash in the deepest pool near by.
This was such fun habitat, we would stop to look at what seemed like a dam down stream and notice there was one upstream as well! I found this one. Now here is a bonus picture of my nearly favorite kind of tree, the giant ancient Sierra Juniper, because you know why:
