On Mediation and 60-pound Rodents
Art: Jack Unruh
I lived for a time in Silver Creek, at the edge of Snyderville Basin. It was a transitional, sometimes lonely period for me and I walked a lot. There was a place I’d go; a place that, for a guy like me, felt as close to sacred ground as I’ll likely find again. It was a secluded aspen grove with a small, intermittent stream and a couple of large boulders that made perfect perches for cool, shaded contemplation.
I moved from the Park City area to southern Arizona, but my allegiance stayed here. I thought often of my walks behind Silver Creek and of the connection I felt to that secluded place in the aspens. After a year away, I returned for a visit, anxious to walk these hills and to reconnect. As I climbed onto my favorite boulder in the aspens, the rock radiated heat from the direct sun. The place had changed. The shade canopy was gone and all around me fleshy chunks of yellow wood circled the stumps of what a year ago had been green and vibrant trees. What had been a grove was now a clearing.
In truth, I had no more claim to that place than the beavers who moved in. I didn’t own the property; I was a trespasser at best. Still, I was dismayed at how fast and how much they changed the place. It felt like a personal affront. And the thing is, I like beavers. I like seeing beaver dams and ponds and the wildness they signify. I understand the benefits beaver ponds provide to birds and other wildlife I love. I just didn’t like that they chose a place I loved as it was.
And there’s the rub. Beavers may be second only to humans in the way they alter their environment to suit their own needs.
Once plentiful throughout North America—their pelts were the stock and trade of our frontier expansion—beavers were almost totally wiped out by the late 1800s. During the last couple of decades, they’ve begun to reclaim some of their native territory.
Beavers are the largest member of the rodent family. Adult beavers weigh 45 to 60 pounds and, in the wild, live to about 12 years old. They eat leaves, twigs and bark as well as sedges, water grasses and roots. Beavers mate for life. Young stay with their parents until age 2, when they are kicked out and must find their own territory. Beavers dam streams and create ponds to protect themselves. Their lodges, either built of logs and mud at the edge of a pond or dug into the side of a stream bank, always have underwater access to keep them safe from predators.
Like much of Park City’s human population, beavers are seasonal workers. They don’t hibernate, but do become less active in winter. After a short burst of tree cutting in spring to repair dams and lodges, beavers cut few trees during summer since their preferred foods of fresh grasses, tubers and young saplings are readily available. In autumn, they log heavily to lay away winter’s supply of food which they stash in the water around their lodge, usually anchoring one end in the mud on the pond bottom.
To a beaver a tree is a tree is a tree, whether it’s in your backyard or my secret meditation place. Their favorite trees are aspen, poplar, alder and willow. Chances are, any Park City neighborhood with adjacent water will sooner or later have beaver issues. Most folks, it seems, share my reaction: it’s great to have beavers around—until they invade our personal space. And when they get too close, our not-in-my-backyard impulse almost always kicks in. Move ’em somewhere else, we say.
Truth is, short of exterminating beavers from the entire surrounding ecosystem, relocation or control efforts don’t work very well. If you live in suitable beaver habitat, no matter how many of the critters you get rid of, sooner or later another will show up. If you have beaver neighbors, there are steps you can take to help your trees from becoming their snacks. The Utah State Division of Wildlife Resources offers a creative solution: mix two cups of sand into a gallon of paint that matches the color of your tree bark and paint it on each tree up to about four feet. Or there’s the tried-and-true method of chicken wire wrapped a couple of times around each tree.
Either way, I’ve decided it’s easier and healthier just to enjoy the privilege of living in a place where wild things are a part of our daily lives than it is to get all worked up over a 60-pound rodent in the yard.
Mark Menlove is a regular contributor to Park City Magazine. “Eye on Nature,” which appears in each issue, is his justification for spending so much time wandering and wondering about Park City’s open spaces.
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