The Beaver

Photo by Dave Merwin

We drifted slowly in the bright afternoon sun. My cousin was fidgeting and making a nuisance in the middle of the canoe, and my grandfather was irritated and trying to get him to sit still. I was old enough to sit in the bow and felt like an explorer in an exotic forest. For a brief moment, there was quiet, and the water was still. That's when we saw it move underneath us.

As kids, canoes were our yachts. The tippy boats were an elegant means to an end. There seemed to always be one available for a paddle. And paddle we did. With my father, we explored lakes all over New England. We would use canoes to travel in these lakes for weeks on end. The most extended trip I took was with my father when I was about 10 or 11 in Maine. I still remember the days of endless paddling and thinking I could go anywhere.

Our canoes were always British racing green Old Towns, 12 to 14 feet and made of some sort of indestructible plastic. My father had the one exception. It was a 16-foot exhibition canoe. It was gigantic and could hold weeks of supplies, and was the toughest boat I had ever been in. My father told me that you could put it on a jeep, accelerate and then stop, launching the canoe onto the road and it would be fine. I was impressed.

As a teenager, I did a week-long tour with a local group of other teenagers. My mother sent me on the trip to give me something to do. I almost died from hypothermia and learned to paddle the canoe in high winds, battling the most giant waves I had ever seen on a lake. I also discovered that most people flip canoes frequently.

I have never flipped a canoe. Ever. It is an achievement that I am terribly proud of. In fact, I've never seen anyone in my family flip. To me, flipping a canoe was ridiculous. The only way that happened was if you didn't know what you were doing.

So, to explore any body of water, the assumption was we were going to use a canoe. It wasn't until much later in life when I came across the McKenzie drift boat that I learned a more purpose-built craft existed. The canoe has a shallow draft, so you can go almost anywhere. The canoe will hold an incredible amount of food and fishing gear so you can be gone all day. And the canoe was quiet. If you were a fish, it was deadly silent. Because of that, I have caught more fish from a canoe than from any other watercraft period. Especially if my grandfather was the skipper.

Moving a canoe through water and not zigging and zagging all over the place requires a specific paddle stroke called the "J" stroke. You insert the paddle into the water at your complete extension, pull the paddle back, and flair the paddle away from the side of the boat before you pull the paddle out behind you. This little flair is the "J" in the j stroke. And this little flair is what keeps you going straight.

My grandfather was the master of the "j" stroke. He moved the boat with such efficiency you hardly felt the boat jerk or sway. Just a slight sliding of the canoe underneath you as you moved forward. He paddled us across the lake that day to go fish the inlets and coves for bass and pickerel. There were miles of coves and grass islands that provided shelter for growing the bass large and aggressive. You could float and fish for hours, never casting to the same place twice. Today we were headed up into the tributary that fed the lake.

Once you found the deep channel directed towards the headwaters, you could paddle up into the river for a mile or more. These deep channels had undercut banks that hid gigantic bass and maybe the occasional trout. It was great fishing for kids in a canoe. You were never bored, and the further up you went, the more wildlife you saw. Swallows and herons. Eagles and ospreys. Red-winged blackbirds and songbirds galore. It was beautiful.

As we traveled up the river, we began to see evidence of beaver homes. Not the great big mounds you see from time to time but drags from the brush and sticks chewed bare. Beaver will strip the bark from the branches and leave the branches to bleach in the sun or add them to their dams or homes. I always saw beaver as a sign of wildness. When I moved to Oregon, I knew I was in a wild country because there was a beaver in every river I fished.

As we floated around a corner, we glided slowly so we could fish the banks. My grandfather positioned us in the middle of the channel so we could cast without hooking each other, avoiding a calamity of rent flesh and blood. We were about to start casting when he said, "Shh."

I had never seen a beaver up until that moment. It seemed impossibly large. As big as I was. And so completely at home in the water. It passed underneath us without moving a muscle. It moved at an unhurried pace, gliding by, taking its sweet time to look at us. It crossed underneath us, perpendicular to the canoe and when its head emerged underneath the right side, its hind legs had yet to pass on the left.

We watched, frozen, not wanting to disturb anything. When it had almost completely passed underneath us, it brought its head back in alignment and twisted its body in a knot to change directions. With a violent flick of its tail, the silt from the lake bottom erupted in a cloud, and the beaver was gone. We were stunned and sat in silence for a few moments. My grandfather only said "Wow," and we erupted with laughter and joked about catching the beaver on one of our lures.

I remember this in minute detail. I remember the calm look of this beaver floating below me at a 90-degree angle. I remember being confused at how large the beaver was. I remember the odd texture of its tail and the way that its paws folded under itself. I remember the bizarre way that it moved through the water so effortlessly.

I remember all of those details, but I can't remember when my wife asks me to take out the recycling. Or sometimes my own kids’ names. I've often wondered why I remember moments like this in such intimate detail while other more salient things I can't remember at all. I close my eyes and I’m sitting in that canoe again, watching that beaver glide beneath us. It makes me miss my grandfather a lot. These memories are whispers from him.