Yesterday we went driving through the high country, way up highway 88 where it snakes along the Carson River up past Woodfords. There is a not-so-secret beaver habitat out on Washoe Tribal lands out there. Years of coppice cutting have produced a THICKET of willow and scruffy trees. We hadn’t visited the habitat since summer and wanted to see what it looked like with a little bit of snow. (I was dying to see beaver footprints and a tail scrape in snow.)
One never knows where the spirit of beaver adventure may lead. We turned off 88 onto Carson River Road which follows the west fork of the river into tribal lands. At the first curve, 15 miles and a peak away we saw beaver dams. We pulled over to investigate. Lovely interlaced and curving work, framed by chewed cottonwood stumps and trees that stood despite huge fresh bites in them. A definitely active colony. Maybe the children or grandparents of the beavers I knew about.
We drove on a little more, now craning our necks at every bend in the river. Four miles along we spotted another series of dams. Curving and strong, breaking the water into deeper pools. In fact, the beavers had made such a nice pool, someone had installed their pump house at it. A corrigated building covered the pump itself, which pulled water from the reliable beaver pond. A very useful flow device.
We stopped a few more times, but there were no more beavers until we reached the known colony. It had sustained a little water damage, and my very favorite curving dam had been washed out. But there were three new ones down stream and a number of fresh chews. I scoured the light snow for sign of a tail drag but I saw only the footprints of birds. That is high desert area, beautiifully bleak and not much snow. The air smells of wild sage and pinyon pine grows in scruffy patches.
With very little sleuthing we had found three colonies in a 15 mile radius. What lay beyond we could only imagine. It was a solid reminder that we need to get to work next on our beaver identification map. Maybe you have a suggestion about the easiest way to add this to the website: a tool for identifying a colony and marking its coordinates so that people from Los Gatos to Eureka could see the beaver colony near them. There has to be any easy way to do it. If you have some ideas write and let me know.
In the meantime, keep your eyes open. You never know what you might find.
