How’s that for a beaver anniversary card? It’s been a full year since I went to the Oregon conference. A year ago today I was walking anxiously among the registration tables and meeting strangers I had only read about. Funny how things unfold.
Speaking of ending up places you never expected, I thought I’d give you a little tribal lore today and talk about beavers at the beach. What’s that you say? Beavers never go to the beach? Ahh, watch and learn young Jedi.
Apparently the Hočąk (Winnebago) tribe in Nebraska and Wisconsin knew all about this. The beaver is the master of water in their tales, including the ocean.
Beavers, as masters of water, play a prominent role in one of the stories about Hare. Hare was led to a mysterious man who had lost his red scalp and wanted Hare’s help in getting it back. This man was probably Redhorn, one of whose wives was She who Wears a Beaverskin Wrap, the outer garment perhaps suggestive of her inner nature. The mysterious man knew that Hare could depend on a family of beavers who lived at the edge of the Ocean Sea that surrounds the island Earth. When Hare arrived, the father beaver told him that he would ferry him across the ocean on his back, but his wife interrupted and said that if they were to get there in a decent amount of time, that she had better do it. In their ability to ferry Hare across the ocean, the beavers show their mastery of the element of water. Hare presented his hosts with a hoe as a gift, an implement reminiscent of the front teeth of a beaver as well as the beaver’s cultural preoccupation with removing trees the way a people sculpt their gardens.
Still not sure beavers belong in an ocean? Think of an area with two parallel rivers that both run to the sea. Like the Albion and the Navarro in Mendocino for instance. When dispersers are looking for new territory they could go up and over the mountains in between I suppose, but an easier way would be to follow the river downstream and through the ocean until they come to the next fresh water and then turn inwards. Sure, they need fresh water to drink, but they can go without drinking for a good long time.
Near as I can tell this unmistakable video comes to us from somewhere around Vancouver BC. (Aren’t there killer whales there? Yikes!) The beaver is clearly using the bay to get around from one freshwater body to another. When I was talking with Michael Pollock on the way to Occidental, he told me about some early research he did in Alaska, referring to island beaver colonies who could only have gotten there by way of ocean travel. And then there’s always the briney beavers from the Salty Seaside Ponds in the work of Greg Hood.
Remember a beaver has everything it needs for long aquatic voyages. Webbed back feet, and a nose, eyes and ears that sit above the water line. Around here March is disperal month! So if you’re at the ocean anytime soon keep an eye out for a unusual flat-tailed seal. It could happen!
