The Beaver Dam

This afternoon after some yardwork (I fixed the leaf vacuum and then vacuumed up leaves that Corey raked up) we dragged the canoe out across the beaver dam into what we call the tree channel. One end of the tree channel goes under Davis Creek Road while the other normally empties out into the lake. When there's water, that is. The pic above is a view from the canoe in the tree channel towards the lake.

When the lake's full we could canoe from our dock, into the tree channel, and then out onto the lake. Right now, however, the only reason there's water in the tree channel is because of our resident beaver. Previously when we took our cats out on a forest walk over the beaver dam we could see and hear the top of the dam, but we could never really gauge its height. So today, we canoed over to the top of the dam, beached the canoe, and then walked past the dam to get a shot of what it looked like from the other side. In this video clip we're canoeing at the top of the dam. The pic above is a shot from the other side.

Above is a shot looking out towards the lake on the other side of the beaver dam. You can see boat docks stranded on dry land and a meadow growing where the lake usually is. At full pond we can usually canoe out here and beyond. Meanwhile, it was back through the fallen trees back to the canoe and then back up the tree channel, heading back past the beaver lodge.

And after all that hard paddling, it was time to break out the lawn chairs on our dock and watch the sunset. We saw a family of deer playing out in the spit between the tree and boat channels—they made their way there jumping over the beaver dam, the same way we go when we take the cats out for a long forest walk.