The Theme

For many years a string of beaver ponds, like shiny pearls on a necklace, ran along a little unnamed creek that flowed through a shallow valley of second growth woods and overgrown pastures just a half mile from my house. While taking walks I always enjoyed pausing and looking at the ponds, seeing the open water that reflected the sky and registered the wind, watching the geese, ducks and herons that lived there, and discovering the work zones where the beavers gnawed down trees. I liked spotting the mud-slicked, beaver belly shaped work trails along which they dragged limbs and branches down to the pond to maintain their dam, expand their lodge and pile up twigs for winter food.

During several pond-side sit spots I watched the beavers swimming silently across the pond. I heard them knorring back and forth, a soft communication I had never known about. Once I saw a whole family of beavers lolling on a mud bank, playing, taking a break from their work.

Two years ago the main beaver dam ruptured; maybe due to an extended rainy spell that included several torrential downpours, maybe due to colony fatigue, maybe due to disease, maybe due to a collection of causes. As soon as the dam broke the water level dropped and a green blanket of grasses and weeds sprouted across the exposed mud of the pond bottom. I felt a tinge of sadness. I missed the open water of the pond, the industrious beavers, and the rich community of birds, animals and plants that the pond attracted and nurtured.

Then, this past summer, I spotted fresh branches laced and woven into the breach of the old dam. Thrilled with this evidence that the beaver were rebuilding I began to check on the dam and saw it steadily grow higher and thicker, saw the water level rising, and watched the pond slowly spread and retake the terrain from the grasses and weeds.

One afternoon when I paused to gaze at the dam and the expanding beaver pond the word “rebuilding” came to mind, a word that instantly resonated with heart and mind, a word that suggested a nature connection theme. An urge grew within me to go to the pond, to sit, to study, to understand the essence of “rebuilding.”

Being called by a theme was a change in the order of things. It seemed as if some part of my mind was on patrol detecting potential nature connection themes. But time was running out for this theme. I was scheduled to fly to Germany on Thursday for a two week vacation. The days ticked by. The usual inertia and schedule demands prevented me from heading to the pond.

On Wednesday night I realized that if I didn’t go Thursday morning I would miss the early frost-free October days to watch the beavers preparing for winter. And, more importantly, I would betray the guiding forest connection part of my mind.

5:40 a.m. First Light

Waking up 20 minutes before the alarm chimed, I slipped out of bed and completed a brief session of meditation and yoga stretches in the dark. Minutes later standing by the kitchen sink, sipping a cup of steaming Assam tea, I peered through the window gauging when there would be enough daylight to walk safely to the pond. Gradually the form of the garage and the silhouettes of the trees emerged from the darkness. Shouldering my backpack I stepped outside.

Perfect timing, I thought. Just enough light to see the ground and move at a normal pace. I strode across the yard, stepped through the gap in the stone wall, continued through a grove of ash saplings, down a brief stretch of abandoned colonial era road and walked onto the wide, mowed path that led down a long gentle hill to the beaver pond.

Surrounded by lingering, thick nighttime silence I looked to the south where the first thin layer of morning color peeked above the horizon. First light is good light, I thought.

Suddenly, a tentative tik, tik, tik sounded from a nearby bush, a cardinal voicing the first call of the morning. Then I heard the hesitant squeaks of a chickadee, the soft simp, simp, simp of a song sparrow, and a hesitant jay, jay, jay of a blue jay.

More birds joined in. A white-throated sparrow sang a clear whistled old Tom Peabody, Peabody, Peabody. A robin called a husky tut, tut, tut. The songs and calls grew louder and clearer as if the birds drew confidence and gained strength from hearing each other. It was a morning chorus, but brief one, lasting about five minutes, not like spring when the chorus grew into a swirling, ringing crescendo of territorial songs. It was fall now and the birds had other business to attend to; feeding, resting and preparing for their daunting southward migration. Still, it felt like a gift to hear this October morning chorus, to listen to this musical celebration of another new day.

6:49 a.m. Pond

Setting up my camp stool about fifteen feet from the edge of the beaver pond I could just see the dark water through a patch of tall grasses. The temperature was 48 degrees. A faint breath of wind puffed from the WNW.

It was still too dim to see much so I brought my attention to the sounds around me. A catbird, a lingering Neotropical migrant, called mew, mew, mew. A jet liner whisper whooshed high above. A trio of blue jays jayed back and forth. A screech owl called its mournful, tremulous, whinnying wail. The white-throated sparrow sang. A drake mallard called veep, veep, veep. Ducks splashed and flapped their wings somewhere out on the pond

Then, enough light to see the head of a beaver tracing a V across the still water, a beaver on duty before sunrise. Two wood ducks fanned the air as they flew over. I saw a great blue heron flap gracefully down and land along far edge of the pond.

The pond had already been discovered by the wood ducks, mallards and herons. Using their opportunistic bird’s eye vision they found the reborn pond and now were living, feeding, and resting upon its waters and along its shoreline.

6:59 a.m. Light and Color

A subtle morning color show appeared in the southern sky, faint fluffs of pink floating in clumpy gray clouds interspersed with ribbons of blue. Above the horizon a swelling of brighter pink gave promise of the approaching sunrise.

I tracked a solitary crow as it flapped lazily over the pond. A goldfinch looped above the brush. Beyond the pond on a gently sloped hayfield a trio of deer nibbled peacefully on the succulent, green re-growing grass.

I sent my hearing out to listen for softer, subtler, and more distant sounds. Soon I detected the chewing and gnawing of beavers feeding on bark and branches. From the far woods I heard the ank, ank, ank call of a white-breasted nuthatch, a nasal tone that carried surprisingly far. Beyond the hayfield a crow called caw, caw, caw, another call that carried far in the morning air.

Two wood ducks flew over right over, spotted me and flared. With a touch of disappointment I realized I was a stranger, an intruder into the life of the pond.

7:09 a.m. The Bowl of Life

The sun inched above the horizon. Activity picked up. A pair of ducks took off from the far edge of the pond and splashed down in a patch of open water in front of me. Through stems of grass I saw a male and female wood duck. I watched them swim, saw them dip their beaks into the water to feed. The female was a soft gray with a demure white eye ring and a subdued head crest. The male was outrageously beautiful with a harlequin display of iridescent green, emerald, white, blue and russet and bright red eyes, plumage shaped by centuries of female selectivity. Clearly the hen wood ducks preferred handsome and dashing drakes.

Two beavers swam side by side across the pond. A fish splashed to the surface creating concentric rings that spread across the water. Ducks flapped their wings and splashed across the pond. A song sparrow flitted out of a bush, landed at the muddy pond-edge and began to pick and feed. I knew that water’s edge was favored habitat for song sparrows. A flight of mosquitoes hummed around my ears.

My vision seemed to blur and defocus. When I regained focus the world looked different. I saw the pond as a shimmering, watery bowl of life, a giving bowl that attracted, nourished, and sheltered a multitude of life forms.

7:19 a.m. Wild

I watched the pair of wood ducks swimming silently, pausing, dipping their beaks in the water, straining the rich life-laden water for food. The male gently, almost respectfully, followed the female. She climbed out of the water and perched on a log; he stepped onto an adjacent patch of mud. They stood in synchronous silence almost as if they were pausing to take in and enjoy their surroundings. Then, simultaneously they turned their heads, stretched their necks and with deft movements of their beaks began to preen their feathers.

There was something wild, natural and eternal in this scene, something that loosened my sense of linear time. And something had shifted for now I felt accepted, felt like I blended in.

7:29 a.m. Conflict

The sun finally pulled above the horizon. Direct angled rays cast a luminous shimmer upon the water of the pond. The sunlight streamed through the trees and leaves and dappled the green and tan grasses around me.

A red-bellied woodpecker called kwirr, kwirr, kwirr, a clear tone that seemed tinged with melancholy, perhaps the melancholy of being a single creature in a vast swath of nature.

Two more wood ducks dropped out of the sky and splashed down in front of me, two more brightly colored males. The preening male and female ceased their self-care and slipped cautiously back into the water. The two new males approached the pair. I could feel an uptick in tension, could see all three males lift their heads and puff their plumage

The three males began to circle around. Suddenly one of the new comers flew at the first male, called out a shrill jeeeee, jeeee, jeeee, flapped it wings, and attacked with its beak. The first male flapped its wings, called and beaked back. The third male joined the fray. I watched the three males engage in what seemed like dramatic display fighting while the female swam demurely nearby.

I looked on fascinated, grateful to witness this display of deep nature. But I also felt a little guilty, even embarrassed as if I was a voyeur peering into the privacy of an intimate courtship ritual

The active conflict stopped. The males swam in widening circles and slowly seemed to relax. The female swam close to one of the males and the two began to swim together. The other two males acted indifferent, began to dip their beaks and feed, and a few minutes later paddled away. With wood ducks it is always the female who chooses her mate. From what I learned later she likes to find a partner for the long journey south, someone to guard her from sexually aggressive gangs of males.

7:39 a.m. Thoughts

The sunlight was bright and direct now and had swallowed up the soft, almost sacred, early morning light. My hour was winding down. I took a few minutes to savor the sounds. Another catbird mewed, a drake mallard veeped. I heard the soft chuckling knorring of the beavers. A wood duck took flight, a female calling a mournful oo-eek, oo-eek.

I reflected back on my original thoughts on the rebuilding theme. I liked it. I considered rebuilding as an example of individual effort, as a demonstration of tough-minded resilience, as the epitome of lifting oneself up by ones bootstraps.

Now, after an hour sitting beside the reborn beaver pond my thoughts and feelings had changed. Rebuilding seemed more like an act of generosity, more like an expression of community. The beavers rebuilt their dam. The pond came back to life.

Yes, the beavers now had food and shelter, but also the ducks and herons and fishes and frogs and sparrows found a home, found an arena to act out their timeless dramas, found a place to fulfil their life generating purpose.

These new thoughts about rebuilding seemed to instantly transfer from the world of nature to the general realm of human endeavors, to the specific space of my life. To rebuild, I thought, is to share, is to express generosity, is to connect with and provide for the community of life.

This sit spot took place on October 10, 2019 in Dyberry Township, Pennsylvania.