Grey Owl’s lesson at the beaver pond
Beavers are a keystone species, a vital part of a connected ecosystem
WHACK goes the beaver’s tail scattering the birds from the trees and the bushes. The spring peepers cease their incessant song; a once sleepy muskrat plops below the pond’s dark glassy surface. And the painted turtles sunning themselves on a floating log slip silently into their watery realm. A few birds hold their ground crouching low on their nests while the bittern disappears into the bulrushes. By now, the beaver has already reached the lodge to be greeted by her two kits.
The cause of this disruption in the daily life of the pond is a canoe carrying two people, a man and a woman. Since it’s spring and the beavers have babies, the young woman pleads with the man not to trap. But he says they need the money the fur will bring, so the trap is set by the lodge’s underwater entrance. They paddle away without speaking, and the pond returns to its timeless ways.
The following morning the two canoeists return to discover both the trap and the beaver missing. The man knew he had securely staked the trap to the pond bottom placing it at the underwater entry to the lodge. Yet in her desperation, the mother beaver had pulled the stake out of the mud and died an agonizing death elsewhere, the trap’s steel jaws clamping inexorably on her soft body while water flooded her lungs.
The trapper is disgusted at this outcome because not only had he lost the beaver fur but also the beaver had lost its life, and all for nothing — nothing at all. He unsuccessfully drags the pond for her body. And, as a last resort, he destroys the dam partly draining the pond, but to no avail. All the life of this pond will now die; the dam buster has become the destroyer of worlds.
The trapper was an Englishman, Archie Belaney (aka Grey Owl), and the woman was a Mohawk, Gertrude Bernard (aka Anahareo), and their story was only beginning. But I’ll let Grey Owl speak for himself from his book Pilgrims of the Wild in which he recounts this scene and its astonishing sequel: So we turned to go, finally and for good. As we were leaving I heard behind me a light splash, and looking back saw what appeared to be a muskrat lying on top of the water along side of the house. Determined to make this wasted day pay, I threw up my gun, and standing up in the canoe to get a better aim, prepared to shoot. At that distance a man could never miss, and my finger was about to press the trigger when the creature gave a low cry, and at the same instant I saw, right in my line of fire another, who gave out the same peculiar call. They could both be gotten with the one charge of shot. They gave voice again, and this time the sound was unmistakeable—they were young beaver! I lowered my gun and said: “There are your kittens.” The instinct of a woman spoke out at once. “Let us save them,” cried Anahareo excitedly, and then in a lower voice, “It is up to us, after what we’ve done.” And truly what had been done here looked now to be an act of brutal savagery. And with some confused thought of giving back what I had taken, some dim idea of atonement, I answered, “Yes; we have to. Let’s take them home.” It seemed the only fitting thing to do.
For the beaver and the two people in the canoe, that was the day everything changed. Anahareo encouraged Grey Owl to write books and articles on conservation, and with the help of their two pet beavers, they became worldwide celebrities. Fame followed! David and Richard Attenborough attended one of Grey Owl’s conservation talks in England and were greatly impressed. Much later Richard directed the film Grey Owl starring Pierce Brosnan. Belaney sat for a portrait by Yousef Karsh (reproduced here), met the king, and was feted everywhere.
After he died suddenly at 49 of pneumonia, his double life was exposed, but, in retrospect, none of that mattered a damn. What remains of his life is monumental, as if a sculptor had blown away the chips from his marble or the nonsense from his existence to reveal its core. What remains is the restoration of the beaver that faced extinction when he and Anahareo picked up their cause and their babies. Not only were the beaver restored but also their dams and the incredible variety of life that the beaver encouraged all over this land.
When my cousin and I were boys, we never saw a beaver nor walked across a beaver dam. Walden Pond was a cranberry bog, and Walker’s Pond a marsh, and all the others mere puddles in the springtime. So, neither these places nor their names existed. I sincerely thank Grey Owl and Anahareo— the names they preferred—for the return of the beaver and the existence of these ponds with all their phenomenal beauty.
Today, Walker’s Pond is a haven for birds: mergansers, wood ducks, herons, and kingfishers. The rattling call of the belted kingfisher, once heard, is never forgotten. Although they breed all across North America to the tree line, they are not a common bird.
The picture of the beaver’s home (see photograph) shows a hidden treasure the reader may have overlooked. On the left side is a Canada goose incubating her clutch of eggs. She did this every year and without protest from the lodge’s builders. It was a good place for a nest, safe from most land predators. Geese, however, are not helpless but rather vigorous defenders of their nest and territory — a foolish fox that approaches a nest is certain to receive a beating. Geese have two nasty weapons: the bite from their beak and the bruising from their wings.
There are those, and they are many, who see little or no value in nature and certainly none in swamps, marshes, or beavers. I claim these people are dark inside — people who live for what we see in the film
Manufactured Landscapes (a 2006 documentary film about the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky, free online): colossal factories, mega-quarries, and mammoth recycling centers. Henry David Thoreau was the patron saint of swamps and all wild places because he relished being in and writing about them, as this excerpt from his Journal reveals: I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place… far away from human society. What’s the need of visiting far-off mountains and bogs, if a halfhour’s walk will carry me into such wildness and
novelty? Journal, August 30, 1856.
Beavers are what biologists call a keystone species—without them entire ecosystems would cease to exist and along with it a multitude of birds and mammals. Beaver dams, unlike most human concrete barriers, allow water to pass through. These furry creators desire to maintain the water at a fixed height to protect their lodge not submerge it. So, every beaver dam has an outlet forming a rivulet or small stream.
These rodents can grow to unexpected sizes with 44 pounds (20 kg) being not unusual, and they constitute 40 percent of the Algonquin wolf’s diet. If Grey Owl and Anahareo hadn’t saved the beaver from extinction, we would have lost most of our wolves — another reason beavers are a keystone species.
A few years ago, I went to Walker’s Pond one evening after sundown. Now a pond at night in the springtime is a special, even spiritual, place — a place beyond human powers and control. The evening I arrived at the pond still seems fresh and new. The spring peepers were in full chorus, creating the loudest sound for their size of any living creature. Only the male peepers sing; the females judge their performance. These tiny frogs — they can sit on your thumbnail — are easy to identify by the faint cross on their back, yet they are incredibly elusive.
Beavers, forever at work it seems, cause ripples on the black surface of the pond and the moon shivers. I can hear whip-poor-wills call in the distance as a night squadron of Canada geese honk their goodbyes northward bound for the tundra. Something splashes at the water’s edge, perhaps a deer or bear taking an evening drink. Others join the peeper chorale: western chorus and wood frogs. A barred owl shouts out his curious call and two wolves howl at the slowly rising moon.
As this empowering oratorio of sound rolls over me, I stand transfixed. It lifts me up; my spirit soars, and I know I can do anything—anything at all. Just as I realize this, the beavers stop swimming. The luminous body of water opens, dark and tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars emerge, and shine upon Grey Owl’s pond.