Yesterday I got a very kind email from a beaver supporter who had attended every festival and was planning on bringing her family and friends to this one, but she was torn to realize the festival was on the same day as the Keep Families Together rally/marches around the country. She wondered whether the festival could show its support in some way or at least register its concerns.
I thanked her very much for this and have echoed her worries in recent days, So many supporters of beavers are intimately connected with this issue, and all of us have the humanity to be alarmed by it. There is a rally in Concord at 10 am, one in Vallejo at 11 and certainly no reason why supporters stand together and can’t come to the festival afterwards. Maybe the big chainlink fence on the edge of the park would be a great place to post all their signs.
I’ll start.
Many were the happy days we spent canoeing up or down the river and enjoying the wildlife and wonders we would meet on the way. Our favorite were the five tidal rivers around Mendocino, where you might canoe all day and have a better equal chance of meeting a seal or an otter than another person. The joys of the river were endless unfolding blue herons nesting in trees, or kingfishers diving into the water.
The was only a single thing in all the world to fear. And that was so terrible and induced such terror I wouldn’t even allow Jon to mention it for fear of waking its wrath:
wind
Until you’ve canoed against a strong headwind from the sea. paddling as hard as you can to literally keep from going backwards. you cannot even being to understand. My arms have been so painfully sore that I couldn’t comb my own hair for days afterwards. The worst was big River, whose wide mouth allowed for great gusts that wreaked hours of havoc on our journey home. It was in big River where I started the practice of pacing myself by singing into the wind long before I understood that this is what the voyageurs were famous for on their many beaver-trapping expeditions.
The wind is he who will not be named when you’re in a canoe.
Jon never quite got the superstition – and was often guilty of saying half way through in very confident tones, “Well at least it’s not windy today”.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mention this because this is exactly how I feel about the weather on the day of the festival. Jon checks it religiously before the day, alternately boasting and bemoaning as he sees fit. I don’t think he understands what it means to “Jinx” something. Even Amy said brightly when we met her in the park, “the weather looks likes it will be great” to which I sharply replied
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
I have learned the hard way that weather gods are all-powerful and will ultimately decide what kind of day to give us. NASA and the weather station mean nothing to them. They will do what they want. They know there is nothing we can do about it anyway.
We will beaver on.
Now on to some brighter things, we got a paragraph in Joan Morris column in the yesterday. I’m always happy when her readers are reminded of us since I think we are easy friends. Thanks Joan for the kindly words!
Celebrate the 11th annual Beaver Festival, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 30 at Susana Park — a new and larger location for the festival this year — on the corner of Susana and Estudillo streets in downtown Martinez. There will be beaver tours, more than 50 nature exhibits and a display by Napa artist Amy G. Hall, who is doing a 2-day street mural of a giant beaver pond and the wildlife it sustains.
