Saturday’s festival was certainly the biggest and best we have ever had. By one o clock we had already distributed 100 bracelets, and tails were a huge hit all day. We started with 500 and there are 98 left so that should give you some idea of how popular the activity was. Gary Bogue has a nice homage today. How many people were there? It’s hard to know, but the first half of the day was unbelievably crowded. We distributed 750 brochures at the event, and the guideline was generally one to a group. It probably isn’t exaggerating to guess we had nearly 1500 people. We had visitors from Concord,Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Oakland, Vallejo, Sonoma, San Jose, Sacramento, Elk Grove, Placer and Jackson. Amtrak brought alot of attendees this year, from all along the San Joaquin line. For the first I’m aware of we took in more money than we spent for the event and two people this morning said that they thought our little nameless park had more people than the entire peddler’s fair.
Several folks have noted that our attendees this year we’re on the whole more knowledgeable about wildlife in general and supportive of efforts to care for it. There were fewer of the battle-curious and more of the beaver-curious. It was a palpable shift from a crowd eager to beat city hall to a crowd dedicated to living with wildlife, and the change was the perfect compliment to the day that included snakes, screech owls, turtles, tarantulas and bats. Corky Quirk’s amazing bat display was one of the best things about the event. I hope she comes back, but if you missed it or didn’t realize what a gift she was, this will fill you in.
I loved lots of things about the magical, exhausting day, (including the many wondrous volunteers that made our biggest event the easiest to pull off ), but one thing that I’ll remember above all else is greeting Mary O’Brien the Utah Forests Project Manager for the Grand Canyon Land Trust who came all the way to California to get ideas for a future beaver festival of her own. Mary was amazed at the crowd, touched by the children, indignant at the sheetpile, awed by the displays, enamored of wildbryde’s charms, and fascinated by every part of the story. After touring the event she walked to the Muir house and jogged back for dinner. We laughed. schemed and gossiped over margaritas and then went to see some beavers before she took the train back to Berkeley where she was staying. I dare say she’ll have plenty to say about her visit.
I was relieved to see that all this fame hasn’t gone to the beavers heads this morning. Apparently it was a working day just like any other. Those are unusual construction materials. Drinking on the job?
Hardly, after he left I got a closer look.
