Beaver dams and canoes

Yes I know I typed ‘widdle’ instead of little. I did it to communicate a certain infantile whining that this article reminded me of. You know the sort, people who rip out a beaver dam and then complain that it slowed them down, even though it was the only thing keeping the water there in the first place.

Paddlers overcome low water, beaver dam at St. George River Race

SEARSMONT, Maine — In their years of paddling together, Barry and Lori Dana of Solon have overcome plenty of obstacles, and have established themselves as perennial favorites on the local whitewater racing scene.

But the veteran canoeists were in for a surprise shortly after beginning the 37th annual St. George River Race — the first of the racing season — on Saturday.

“We found a beaver dam, and we got quite hung up on it and we wasted about a minute and a half trying to paddle backward into the current,” Lori Dana explained. “We got out of it by grabbing the beaver sticks and alders along the side and pushing off the bottom to get backwards enough to get our bow around it.”

Barry Dana said he’d heard some chatter about the beaver dam just before the start, but didn’t realize how much of an obstacle it would present.

“[Nobody said] that right around the next corner, a 90-degree corner, you’re going to be facing a 3-foot opening [in a beaver dam], but all of the current’s going hard right,” Barry Dana said.

“I’ve been working against the beaver all week, but the beaver, I think, won,” Cross said. “We try not to disturb the river too much. We try to make it so you can get down through. But this beaver, … is working very hard. Harder than I was.”

Those pesky beaver dams! Not even the three foot hole they cut in it helped enough. I can’t tell you how many times I stood at the dam and watched in horror as kayaks or canoes tried to pass thru the dam by ramming the sticks out of the way. Now that Martinez has no dams (and no water to speak of) I bet they don’t even come. That’s called irony I guess.

This part of the article also interested me;

“I grew up on Indian Island, Penobscot Nation, and canoeing was life, Barry Dana said.

Guess who else got his start in the Penobscot Nation? That would be Skip Lisle, it was where he invented the beaver deceiver and started his important beaver work. It was ages before he trained Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions. Decades before he came to Martinez to install our castor master. Small world eh?

Those pesky beavers change so many lives.