Semester in the west – Worth A Dam

Wondrously familiar

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, Festival, Who's saving beavers now? September 28, 2014

This is what two mostly damp beaver advocates look like at a Utah festival, On the left is Mary Obrien of the Grand Canyon trust, and on the right is me looking dazed to be sitting at the first booth at the Utah festival where a bright young college student tells you to take a treasure hunt and find the 5 ways that beavers help wildlife. Then come back wih your card filled out, paint a tail, and decorate a beaver-shaped gingerbread cookie!

It was raining the first time I gave my talk indoors at the nature center. So there were lots of folks who wanted to be dry and listen. Thank goodness it stopped soon and folks turned up anyway. At one point I sat by the pond and gave an interview to their tech crew about our experience, the student asking the questions was actually from Danville! Later we went down to the festival proper where we heard about one little boy who had had gotten the notice at school but his mom said “I’m sure it was probably cancelled with the storm”. He convinced her when he somberly said, “But we have to go check“.

Just in case you think I was exaggerating about the storm, the big empty stone-lined waterway around the nature center was RUSHING with muddy water that day. We were told that it probably rains 2 days a year in St. George and that summer temperatures commonly reach 115.

One great idea we want to try at home was a beaver lodge the children made – with the orignal frame of a dome tent covered with willow that kids added branches to to make a beaver house. They were running in and out hiding from ‘otters’ later in the day. Mary had also boldly invited the trappers association who displayed pelts for the children to feel. One surprising trapper commented, “People just don’t realize how good beavers are for streams and wildlife”. Which might have blown my mind if I was not already through the looking glass.

I gave the talk again in the afternoon and then came back to the hotel while they cleaned up. That night Mary picked us up and brought us to their camp sight in Sand Hallow where 15 tents circled their giant field station horse trailer-with-sattrlite dish. The cooking crew made us an awesome dinner of jumbalaya which we ate in a giant circle under the stars. The looming clouds were on the opposite bank and kindly stayed away from us.

After dinner there was a single darting bat, a crescent moon, and looming stars overhead. The great arc of 21 young students of semester in the west introduced where they were from and their majors, then said the favorite part of their day. It was amazing to hear their stories and did you even know there were political majors like environmental politics or environmental humanities? Then Mary asked me to say a little about the research we did on the historic prevalence papers. A huge gust of wind made my teeth chatter too much to talk anymore and fortunately caused the pages of ‘data’ to blow away so that everyone scrambled to retrieve it. Then we said our goodnights and thank you’s and dashed back to the car where Phil brought us back to the hotel.

This morning, Mary picks us up and brings us back to Cedar Springs, from where we will fly home tomorrow morning. The Whitman crew will head off for North for a 5 hour drive to their final camp, where they will end their journey and take finals before heading back to Walla Walla.

Dinner under the stars with tomorrows smart, talented environmental advocates was definitely the best part of the journey. But the woman who introduced herself at my talk as a docent from Yellowstone who does the beaver talks there was definitely a close second.

Then there was the child who explained he knew why beavers were important because (and I quote) “they make honey”

The Big Day

heidi08 Festival July 21, 2013

It’s Sunday so we are officially less than two weeks away from the big day. Worth A Dam will gather this afternoon for our last meeting, and yesterday my dining room table looked like Pier One Imports with all the items gathered for the silent auction. The musicians are lined up, vendors confirmed, and everybody but one group has paid for their tables so that’s promising. Prompting the inevitable question: Are we ready?

Now look at this map for a minute and just let it all sink in how much bigger this is than last year or the year before that. 40 wildlife groups is the absolute limit of what we can shoe-horn into that park, but what an amazing group of people. There are a lot of new groups that I’m very excited about, and some familiar groups that I’m thrilled to have back.

As you can see we have a new beaver charm this year, and a water drop which should be a nice addition. Since Kiwanis couldn’t donate as much this year, I’m planning to let adults do the activity for 10 dollars, so if you’ve been dying for one of these you’re in luck.

Now if you’ve finished your necklace and are tired of walking around talking to all the amazing folk about what they do or the wildlife you saw in your backyard that night, this should keep you busy. Why not sit and listen to some amazing music? The San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers are joining us this year and that should be incredible!

This year’s auction will feature some remarkable items, including a ‘not available in the entire country’ DVD of the Beaver Whisperers CBC Documentary donated by the filmmaker herself which won’t be aired in the US until November or so. Honestly, this could cause an international incident but it is so, so worth it. I expect a bidding war of beaver devotees

You could also spend some time talking to these nice people. They are the Whitman College students behind the new documentary in progress “The Beaver Believers”. They just drove back from Utah where they filmed Mary O’brien. This is a great shot of Mary and the director of the Semester in the West program, Phil Brick.

Now they are heading to Colorado to film Sherri Tippie. After which they’ll be heading to Martinez to film you-know-what!

You can follow their progress by liking their Facebook Page, and we are very excited to have them! If you need a reminder about the Beaver Believer project, listen to this. All in all, it should be a fairly amazing day.

Slightly better at keeping secrets

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions, Earth Day, Educational, Environmental, Festival, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 27, 2013

Way back when Worth A Dam was just forming, (during the punic wars, as Edward Albee would say) I was looking for a licensed non-profit to be our receiving organization and was having conversations with an urban wildlife group based in LA. I was so excited they were interested in being involved I wrote it about it on the then nascent website and they were so annoyed I had blasted the secret liaison-in-process that they withdrew. Keeping secrets, I learned, is very important for beavers. Who knew? It was okay, very soon after their withdrawal I did a presentation for Pleasant Hill Creeks and met Bill Feil of Land for Urban Wildlife who became our official non-profit umbrella and that has worked very well for 5 years. I think it was all for the best, but I did learn something about keeping secrets.

What I learned is to not talk about the thing you’re not supposed to talk about, but to keep asking for permission over and over in alternately charming and irritating ways until your requests are so annoying you are given the all clear! So when Suzanne Fouty called to ask me if I’d talk to Sarah Koenigsberg of Whitman college in WA a few months ago, I said sure. Talk beavers to a complete stranger? Of course! Turns out Sarah is an instructor working on a film project about beavers and their advocates, focusing on climate change and water. She was going to interview Mary Obrien and Suzanne Fouty and Sherri Tippie for the film, but all three insisted they talk to me as well.

It was an incredibly exciting moment to think that the three believed I had something important to offer to the film, because I admire those three women slightly more than God. I could remember the amazing article that first introduced me to Mary way back when she was described in that excellent article from High Country News. It remains one of my favorite beaver reads, even though I now realize the photo at the beginning is a muskrat – not a beaver.

The Semester in the West – or here let them describe it

Whitman College Semester in the West is an interdisciplinary field program focusing on public lands conservation and rural life in the interior American West. Our objective is to know the West in its many dimensions, including its diverse ecosystems, its social and political communities, and the many ways these ecosystems and communities find expression in regional environmental writing and public policy.

We agreed that they would come help with Festival VI, get some film of it and we’d do an interview as well. Wow! Can I tell everyone right now? I was dimly able to ask. No, Sarah said, let me get it confirmed and formalized and then it can happen. I promised to hold my tongue. Which I did. Can I talk about it now? How ’bout now?

Cat out of the bag! All I can say is Sarah should be thankful there were distracting new kits to keep me occupied! Yesterday I finally got the ALL CLEAR so now it’s official and I can formally say that Sarah of Tensegrity productions will be coming to do an interview and film the festival.

The project at hand is a documentary film with the working title, The Beaver Believers. It tells the story of several strong women and their allies, and their common cause of seeking to restore Castor Canadensis, the North American beaver, to much of its former native habitat to provide more water and habitat in the ever-warming West. We propose to tell their stories of creativity, grit, and whimsy with the same spirited spontaneity and serendipity as their activism and ecological citizenship itself. The film will be 35- to 45-minutes in length, appropriate for the “documentary short” category in film festivals.

A collaborative effort between filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg (director of photography) and Whitman College Professor of Politics Phil Brick (director), The Beaver Believers is already well on its way into pre-production, and we have a rigorous production schedule planned for the summer of 2013. Filming will take place from May to August with shoots scheduled in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. {eds note: AND MARTINEZ!}

Now you must hear a taste of their reporting on the subject, listen to this podcasts started at the Utah festival last year. Click on the photo to listen and imagine how the first festival in Utah might compare to the 6th in Martinez. Don’t you live their voices? Mary’s metaphor of the wildlife riding on the beaver tail is an art project waiting to happen! And Sherry’s voice always makes me want to sit in the front for and listen! Suzanne is outstanding! Oh and while you’re listening remember that painting beaver tails and pinning the tail on the beaver are all things the learned about from us.

: Click to Play

They’re stuck with us now. We’re on the calendar and they are sending a team to help lift, carry and film. I’m sure they’ll want to do a beaver viewing too! I’ll do an official announcement this weekend and let Martinez know they’re going to be on camera for beavers. Again! I heard from Sarah that they just got back from Idaho yesterday, visiting some places with beautiful beaver dams and some places that should have them but don’t because they’re always trapped and killed.They also met with Carol Evans of the BLM in Nevada and checked out their amazing habitat in Elko.

I confess to you that I am deeply excited and appropriately terrified about their coming, but every contact I’ve had with Sarah has been reassuring. When I listen to the clip yesterday I realize that this is going to be a inescapably big deal and I can only comfort myself in the usual manner by thinking critically. The very young voice behind that podcast (one of the students) gets to describe Dr. Obrien’s face as being “lined with the desert”? (!) And Dr. Fouty wears “hippie clothes?” (!!) Goodness, what does Mr. ‘Sage’ look like? No comment? Why are the women itemized in narration and not the men? We would have words. That ought to keep me focused. I can do this. I’ve been interviewed in my living room before. Don Bernier filmed me and the first ever meeting of Worth A Dam and Richard Parks used an interview for his final project at UCB school of journalism. I’ll carry on as best I can. Think of the beavers.

And speaking of distracting new kits, our bravest 2013 model was out at 7:30 on Thursday night, allowing me to catch this glimpse as he made his way up from the secondary, through the primary and back home.