We are here now, getting a tiny slice of education-pie. Then we are gone, and they have the meadow back for their own weave-web for, I hope, a long while. (8/8)

underwater. Perhaps a goose nested there, on the beaver-built island in the stream. Maybe the bear found its egg and ate it. Maybe the beaver also splashed into the water when the bear walked here not long ago. (7/8)

and someone steps on the lodge itself and a bigger stick cracks and SPLASH unseen under the mud-and daub dome of the lodge a beaver startles into the water. At the edge of the lodge, a nest. In the nest, a big, empty egg. Ripples in the water as our disturbed friend swims away (6/8)

crevasses among the sedges and the sticks that go all the way to the water below. I feel the sting, like a gentle insect bite or a paper cut, of the sedges on my sandaled feet. We follow the bear’s path out to where the beavers sleep under the mud roof they built themselves (5/8)

some bear paths flagging through the sedges, to a hand-pattied beaver berm that holds a calming half-moon pool, onto their lodge area. We try to go lightly but the edifice snaps slightly underfoot. It is made of hundreds of tooth-harvested sticks, and we are careful where we step—there are (4/8)

comb the undercoat out, with teeth and maybe paws, for a sleeker summer pelt. I can almost see them lying back in the warm sun, mule’s ears flower-shining yellow nearby, as they pluck their bellies and listen to the birds.
That meadow is made by beavers, and we follow (3/8)

unusual. It is a sunny meadow, and a few tufts of downy cinnamon underfur are caught in the stems that are pressed down every which way by the wintery weight of those hefty bodies. That underfur is soft as soft can be. But spring-summer is well under way, so it is time to (2/8)

Sorry, didnt' mean to sound like a brat.

Gift her the respect of calling her a woman?