Analogs of the Beaver Dams built by Sageland Collaborative
It's November and the famous snowcapped Rockies are covered in dry brush.
The Salt Lake just hit a record low.
The west is facing severe water drought.
There's many doing nothing, but there are a select few who did a lot this year.
Early October, a lead botanist directed a group of volunteers along the surprisingly even terrain of East Canyon.
Pursuing the same task as a few weeks prior, the volunteers were directed to move as a beaver would. Weaving green, sticks and other findings from the trail, eventually the brush broke water level and began slowing the pace of the flow.
A pond was formed.
Though not to the level and precision of the expert, a beaver, the dam analogs provided what the canyon so badly needed. With brush preventing the flow of water to continue, the pond formed releases more water into the vegetation. Beavers build dams for shelter but they also keep more water on the land and mitigate the effects of droughts in parched environments.
Nature maintains a unique balance, unable to be recreated by any system manmade. Providing us benefits, also unable to be recreated, the environment's production is finite.
Try as we might, our efforts will never match the vitality and precision of Earth.
But who's to stop us?
The time and efforts we spend outside, in nature, bring us closer to what it is we are to be a part of.
Experiences are developed through time spent somewhere between the pines and the red rocks. Appreciation is built by the attempts we make at recreating what naturally occurs - as naturally as we breathe, the earth maintains its balance. We are beyond a time of coexistence - it is now a time to be knee deep in a stream,
building against the flow,
so that the hydration may spread,
and balance is restored for those who create and maintain it.