I think I mentioned before that I was horrific at math and oddly skilled at statistics. I’m sure there’s some kind of left brain/right brain distinction to explain some of it but for what ever reason one made sense and the other made me panic. No matter who taught it, No matter how much I tried.
One of my favorite concepts used in statistics was always “Degrees of Freedom“, Usually calculated as N=1, it basically it refers to how many chances you might have to achieve those same exact results given the number of times you tried or how many people you tried with. As the degrees of freedom go up the odds of it happening again also go up so the rarity of the results go down. As the degrees of freedom go down, the odds of it happening just like this ever again go down and it becomes very ulikely. Until there is zero chance.
I mention this because in the back of my mind I tend to think of the days before the annual Worth A Dam ravioli feed as Degrees of Freedom. As in “There are this many chances to get it wrong or forget a detail or have to take someone to the ER and still achieve the desired result.” The closer we get to day, the room for error gets lower and lower. As of this morning there is one day left before our 5 course dinner for 13 people. That means one day to get the house set up and make sauces ready and dip the cookies in chocolate. If we were visited by unexpected relatives today, or broke someones toe or had a power outage – tomorrow would become nearly impossible.
In other words, we are down to 1 Degree of Freedom.
Today is a day for Chinese takeout from the cartons in the living room so we don’t mess up the silverware or the table setting. And it’s a great day to read this cozy column by Patti Smith from Vermont which we always enjoy.
Remember when last we heard from Patti she was mourning the death of her beloved beaver Willow, who after a very long life had been unable to escape a bear.
The View from Heifer Hill: Finding an old friend on the river of life
During the last week of December, I skied down to look for the beaver that recently moved into the brook below my house. Beavers do not relocate in December unless calamity strikes. I suspected that a raging torrent from rain and snowmelt had destroyed this beaver’s dam and washed its food cache downstream. While this new location offers good foraging, the rocky stream bottom provides little mud for sealing a dam. Without a deep pond, ice can seal the entrance to a beaver’s lodge, trapping the beaver inside.
I had tried hollering on several occasions to entice this beaver to appear. Since that technique hadn’t worked, I decided that on this visit I would use the stealth approach — sitting quietly and waiting for the beaver to reveal itself. Once I settled myself by the brook, I noticed that the beaver had been building a lodge directly across from my seat. After a few minutes, I heard the gurgle that announced the emergence of the occupant. The beaver that surfaced paddled quickly over and swam back and forth a few times before lunging up the icy bank and onto the snow beside me. I was so pleased to see the notch in the tail that identified this beaver as Dew.
I first met Dew eight or nine years ago. The uncertainty stems from not knowing if she is Dewberry, born in 2010, or Sundew, born the following year. Either way, I met her shortly after she was born to that champion of beaver survivors, Willow. “Survivor” might seem a strange thing to call a beaver who was just eaten by a bear, but she lived to near the maximum lifespan for a beaver (about 20 years). I have not yet determined her exact age, but the teeth I recovered will allow me to.
Isn’t it wonderful that after losing her friends and matriarch of so many years she would run into one of her children who just moved in after losing her old house in storm? Mother nature can be pretty dam sweet sometimes. When she’s not busy doing the other thing.
Dew is the only one of her offspring known to survive, aside from the yearling Gentian. I concluded last month’s column with the hope that Gentian would inherit her mother’s penchant for longevity. Given that I could not find any of her siblings, I didn’t hold out a great deal of hope. Yet here was Dew — approaching her ninth or tenth year! Dew, who seems to have survived her first mate, Ilex, and is now wintering alone in this unlikely location. Given her heritage, I give her much higher odds of surviving this challenging winter than other beavers. I have seen her mother survive as bad.
Patti is such a delightful mix of science, heresy and affection. She pretty much breaks all the rules about not naming or feeding the animals you’re studying. But she also seems to learn more about their lives than anyone who follows the rules ever will. Ever time we get to visit Patti in Vermont my heart swells with the deepest fondness and I am reminded of my own days watching beavers.
Patti is a kindred spirit.
On New Year’s Eve, I took a few friends out to visit her. Along the way, a dark shape was spotted hustling away into the shadows. When I hailed the beast, it stopped, then turned and came toward us. There was Quirinus, one of the porcupines I have been studying. He paused on his travels to eat an apple with us.
The forest, glazed in a mix of ice and snow, shone bright in moonlight. Once we settled by the brook, Dew arrived and began opening up channels in the slushy ice. She took an apple and swam to her lodge to eat it before reappearing and clambering up on the opposite bank. There she spent 15 minutes in elaborate ablutions, scrubbing and combing every bit of her corpulent physique. One of my friends had a blazing headlamp that lit up the scene like stage lights. Dew seemed to be preening for her audience. Why not? Beavers are social animals, and she had been on her own for at least several weeks.
I am so glad that she gets to spend quality time with the beaver after losing his or her mother. I remain completely mystified about how she tells them apart. We only ever had a few beavers whose identities I could spot on sight. Mom with her chinked tail. Dad with his size. GQ with his good loos. Mom II with her red fur. That’s about it.
Maybe you do better? I have a touch of prosopagnosia. I can barely tell humans apart.
When Dew finally swam off, we headed upstream a bit and built a fire. There in the snowy forest, we enjoyed the rising sparks, and a very localized rain shower caused by the melting ice on branch overhead. I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful transition from one year to the next. I was warmed by the fire and by knowing that a new beaver ambassador would carry on the work of my old friend Willow. May the new year bring such joy to you.
And to you Patti!
And may the new year bring joy to any and all reading this site. Wish us luck dipping the tails today. I would invite you all for dinner but consider yourself lucky to escape it. We are not at all generous hosts who do this out of the goodness of our hearts and a love to entertain. We actually do this to compensate for demanding terribly exhausting days of service at the beaver festival and the willingness to resist saying “NO” when being asked for the millionth time. You know what they say, To those whom much has been given, much will be asked.
It’s one free dinner that actually costs the attendees a lot. It dam well better be delicious!
New Years Ravioli Feast-20
