BEAVERS: Next of Kin

She Who Watches Over - S.W. Washington - April 2004

Human representatives often pride themselves for their uniqueness among all animal species. But the very things that make humans unique are probably extremely recent developments. Huge egos, large brains, and the physical apparatus required for effective speech seem not to have appeared in hominids any earlier than 500 thousand years ago.

pictograph / petroglyph? / whatever - S.W. Washington - April 2004

The ability to use these physical attributes is even more recent so that language and speech and the propensity toward symbolic thought can really only be thought of as new evolutionary experiments.

Even so, metaphorical or symbolic thinking does seem to go hand in hand with a level of consciousness that appears to transcend common animal existence. Consequently vast segments of humanity have been led to posit an additional, supernatural, god granted element (often referred to as the soul) associated with the human body. No other animal builds complex cultures and civilizations and therefore it is reasoned that humans must hold a position at the apex of evolution/creation. This assumption is often suggested in humanity’s sacred writings.

Renegade Cows - Mt. Adams - S.W. Washington - Sept. 2007

Ironically, one of the benefits to owning a soul is that it makes it easier to justify eating animals that don’t have souls.

Or it makes it easier to make hats out of them.

Willamette Falls @ Oregon City - Jan. 2006 (Click on the image to view a somewhat larger version)

We like to point to our technology as evidence for the power of our big brains, but don’t quite grasp that the end result is no better and often worse than what other animals accomplish with instinct.

Beaver dam @ Bybee Lake - Northwest Oregon - (Click on the image to view a somewhat larger version)

Beaver construction projects actually turn out to be beneficial to life.

For little mammals with no obvious language skills, beavers have an extraordinary list of engineering accomplishments. This dam is the first in a series of dams or locks that shape one of the inlets to Bybee Lake. This dam apparently controls the water level around the beaver’s home lodge (located in the upper right hand corner of the photo).

Below the dam, additional locks and secondary dams control the seasonal variation of water levels. Massive beaver dredging projects maintain an open channel to the lake, even in the summer.

Note how silt and sediments are pushed to the sides of the channels.

Beaver construction techniques utilize wood acquired from their extensive lumberjack operations as well as local mud and clay.

Beaver canal to the open lake.

Back door to beaver lodge.

Underwater tunnel system exposed.

Ambitious tree felling project

Tree harvesting.

Distribution of resources - overland and overwater.

Beaver infrastructure

Waterfront property.

It all raises a question. If a beaver can build homes, dams, locks, roads, tunnels and canals – if a beaver can harvest and transport timber – if a beaver can plan ahead and store food for the winter – if a beaver can safeguard his family from predators – how is it that a beaver isn’t actually conscious?

Maybe consciousness like our own is only a matter of degree – and not the divine impartation of a magical element.

Maybe one day, we will see clues that our fellow mammals are taking the first steps to human-like consciousness. Perhaps here we see evidence of the first beaver inkling of the ‘linkin’ log’ concept that will allow future beavers to construct log cabins instead of lodges.

Here we might see evidence for a developing sculptural sensibility.

The resemblance between this unfinished beaver sculpture…

…and this famous Egyptian sculpture is remarkable.

Possible beaver-made duck decoy.

Just screwing around, or are beaver scientists beginning to unravel the secrets of the double helix?

In Stanley Kubrick’s movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, a mysterious black monolith teaches a band of hominids to use tools. One of the hominids throws a bone ‘smashing implement’ into the air. The bone twirls up into the sky where it gradually morphs into a space craft. The whole technical evolution of our species is implied during the artful passage of a few seconds of celluloid.

Perhaps here in a similar fashion, on the bank of Bybee Lake, these implements mark the birthplace of beaver consciousness…

…as they struggle to come to grips with the ‘lever principle’.

Is this an example of beaver engineers using levers to raise rock obstructions out of their navigable canals?

Is this a beaver traffic signal?

Is this a beaver depiction (top left quadrant near the midline) of slumbering carp?

Is this a beaver rendering of James Dean?

Only time will tell.

Kayaks on the Sandy River – A True Story

Prologue:

paper boat
cast adrift on the current
sent on an indeterminate voyage
bound to get soggy
destined to sink
fun in the journey
(for the creator?)

silver fry
cast adrift on the current
sent to the ocean
bound to return
destined to spawn (and die)

(Fun in the journey?)

the River
the Current
carries us along

Maybe we understand the river is a metaphor.
Maybe we learn to read the currents and risk the rapids in order to live out the story, to wager our lives and prove we can win…sometimes.

Maybe.


The Narrative:

Well, I don’t know about all that philosophical crap, but my brother Fred, the Monkey-cam and I decided to try kayaks on the Sandy River. We started at the far end of Oxbow Park with the intention to make it down to Lewis and Clark State Park.

None of us had ever taken kayaks down a river before, not even the Monkey-cam, and I don’t think I’d taken my canoe down since before the floods in November – the floods that significantly rearranged the landscapes of the Northwest’s strato-volcanoes.

As I’ve hiked various trails around the three ‘guardian’ peaks (Adams, Hood & St. Helens) I’ve come to realize that mountains are far from static environments. I think that in terms of geologic timeframes, a volcano is like those pyramid shaped stacks of oranges at the grocery store which can collapse quickly and completely if you take out an orange from the bottom row.

The Sandy River is a child of Mt. Hood.
Evidence of its dynamic potential was everywhere evident.

I picked this particular section of the Sandy River because it was supposed to be lacking in significant rapids – the kind that demand the technical kayaking excellence that none of us possessed. But an ominous roar from an unexpected location ahead suggested that we should pull ashore and scout downriver by foot – just to be safe.

What we saw was an incredible uncharted waterfall formed by accelerated erosion. I had little doubt that the unconsolidated debris carried by November’s record rainfall was somehow responsible for this new river feature. I’m a little hazy on the location. It was somewhere between Oxbow Park and Dabney State Park, but, as big as it was, it seemed extremely unstable, and for all I know, it may have been worn down since then. As I studied it, it didn’t escape my attention that it looked remarkably similar to Falls Creek falls, though more like a mirror image.

I had seen mountain climbers on T.V. outline their assaults on Mt. Everest, so, in a similar fashion, I drew up a preliminary plan for our route down the falls. I knew our borrowed Pungos, with their ‘V’ shaped hulls were not ideal for maneuvering in rapids like these, but all of us had drunk enough of Fred’s homebrewed beer to believe that it really wouldn’t be that hard.

Never-the-less, Fred and I determined that the Monkey-cam should go first – just in case.

The Monkey-cam courageously followed my proposed route to the edge of the precipice (bless his heart) with disastrous results. Fortunately, he was dexterous enough to leap form the Pungo to some nearby branches. (I’ve decided his probation period is over.) You can see the Monkey-cam’s wrecked Pungo submerged in the punchbowl at the base of the falls (a punchbowl remarkably similar to the one I’ve seen on the Eagle Creek Trail.).

Fred was up next.

Having seen what befell the Monkey-cam, and keenly aware that he would be unable to leap from his kayak, Fred chose to use ‘the Force’ like Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars movie. At least that’s the reason he said his eyes were closed.

Halfway down the stretch of rough water, Fred, like a bareback bronco rider, demonstrates his excellent, evidently instinctual balance and form.

All I had to do was follow Fred’s path.

It really didn’t help much to paddle in the midst of the cascading torrent, but I noticed that once you got going fast enough, you could use your paddle to fly much like flying squirrels use flaps of underarm skin. In this manner, I was able to avoid the hidden rocks (rocks that are remarkably similar to the rocks at the base of Latourell Falls) cloaked by the dynamic white robe of water approaching terminal velocity.

I can’t speak for Fred, but in my own case I believe it was my super buoyant love-handles that minimized the time I spent underwater (for some reason, this scene reminds me of the upper section of Pup Creek Falls.)

We got lucky this time. We triumphed against the river. We demonstrated that we could take our destinies into our own hands…at least for a time. We perpetuated the illusion of free will and self determination.

Mostly, we had fun.

REMEMBER ME

This handprint appears above a depiction of a spotted pony that was painted in a gallery of a cave at the end of the last ice age some fifteen thousand years ago. Scholars point out that the gallery was far away from any living quarters and difficult to get to and therefore posit some religious – perhaps magical – significance to the artwork. It is one of the first recorded instances of a hominid making a characteristic gesture across time – a message that cries, “I was here. Remember me.”

Later, in one of the first super civilizations, the Egyptians went to great lengths to have their respective deity remember them each as specific individuals.

Of course, the more resources one had, the greater the lengths attained…

Who will remember me?

When you face that question, it becomes easy to see the selling points for religion as it exists today. What peasant, toiling in the mud of the fields during a short brutish life wouldn’t want to be re-united with God and family in an Eden-ic paradise?

A forgotten town in West Texas

Memorial Day at Willamette Cemetery

Marcus Borg’s historical, metaphorical approach to the Bible makes a keen distinction between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus, and if accurate, makes literally derived ideas from ‘scripture’ about eternal life no more reliable than other approaches. Borg seems to suggest that Jesus’ gospel, at least the one the gospels say he shared, was mostly not about Jesus so much as it was about something called the Kingdom of Heaven – that is - it looks like Jesus was trying to say something about God, not himself – something about how to live while you’re alive and not about setting aside happiness and rewards for your eternal afterlife. (JESUS: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary.)

How do we leave a mark on the world?

Who will remember us?

In Munich, a man approached me and began speaking, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. His appearance was weathered and merchant-marine-like. His skin was deeply tanned and crackled like old leather. His coat looked lived in with the polishing that comes from wear. I figured he was a beggar or panhandler. He carried a box of cheap white candles. He could see I didn’t understand his words, so he tried some different ones, finally asking, “English?” to which I nodded. He started over again in very good English, telling a story about a friend of his who had just died that day in the underground. He said he was collecting money so he could buy candles to make his friend a small shrine. I had never heard this approach used by panhandlers in Portland, so I handed over several Euros. No doubt my contribution would put him that much closer to acquiring a bottle of cheap wine. I didn’t think of him again.

At the end of a day’s worth of sightseeing, I took the underground train back toward the hotel. As I walked in those long, perpetually lit mall-ways, seeking the surface, I passed a dead end of sorts and chanced to see the ‘beggar’ with 4 or 5 friends standing around an arrangement of candles.




Bad public high school history classes talk about ancient cultures as if the people who lived in them were primitive next-to-cavemen like monkeys who foolishly worshipped the sun. But looking at the art the Egyptians made to mark the event of death lets you see that, if the perspective were to be reversed and they found themselves somehow looking back at us, they would likely shrug at a culture that worshipped the son and look askance at our sheet-rock architecture designed to last for a decade or two.

I think we humans, across cultures and time, are all identical in the desire to be remembered.





It isn’t a pyramid of course, but last night I left my hand-print on some of our more durable examples of contemporary construction. Since I used a spray bottle of water to make the negative hand-print, it seems I will only be remembered for about a half an hour at best.

(Detail of figure above)

Here, where homeless people sleep, the hand-print still seems pretty eloquent.

("I just want to mean something", found artwork under the west end of the Fremont Bridge)