“What’s that in the pasture?”
I looked to my right as we drove down the gravel road to the barn, my attention drawn in the direction of Rich’s question.
I didn’t know. It looked like a small deer or a dog, lying in the brown grass, probably dead. While Rich began the afternoon feeding, I walked alone up pasture to solve the mystery. What I found brought me to tears.
It was the body of a large, dead beaver, lying at least 30 feet from the creek. She was on her back, and when I rolled her over, I noticed fresh blood coming from a hole by her ear. She probably hadn’t been dead for more than an hour, though I was sure she’d suffered far longer than that. Some one, somewhere along the creek, shot her in the head and left her for dead. She must have followed the creek to the ford where our horses cross into the upper pasture, and she made an agonizing crawl onto land to a place where we’d notice her.
I reached my hand down to touch her, stroking her fur, tears brimming in my eyes as I apologized over and over for the stupidity of humans, for their cruelty. All animals die, I know, but they don’t need to suffer as this beaver obviously did.
She was enormous, perhaps 60 pounds or more. This was a beautiful, elder beaver – a longtime caretaker and nurturer of the area’s wetlands. I wondered, given the circumstances of her death, how she managed to make it into this horse pasture … and why.
Rich joined me and we held hands, looking over her body. Rich was so angry. True, my husband is a hunter, but he respects life and doesn’t kill needlessly. We eat what he brings home and he prays for the animal spirits who provide us with their meat and skins.
Standing over this beaver, we made a decision to take her home and honor her in the Old Way. We made an offering and said our prayers for her spirit; we took her home and offered tobacco and sage.
Again, I wondered why she’d come to us. I think, in part, her spirit traveled and knew that we’d find her and treat her respectfully – that we’d honor her life and sing her over. We’d keep her skin to remember her. Also I think she offered herself as a messenger for us.
What is the message of the Beaver? As one of nature’s finest architects, much of what Beaver teaches is about foundational work, flow and harmony. She goes about her building industriously, with an eye to the larger scheme of things. Left to her own devices, she changes the flow of water, the flow of energy around her, for the benefit of all. She creates balance in our rivers and wet places. Spiritually, this is also the balance and flow of our emotions.
It came to me the next morning, in a place between sleep and waking, that her message for me is very much about attending to my own foundation. This beaver appeared in the pasture where my horses live, and the foundation of my work with the horses has recently been in personal question.
I’ve realized that the people I accepted as role models, while doing their own valued brand of teaching, don’t share my personal philosophies. We aren’t coming from the same place, and by modeling them, I’ve come to understand that I haven’t been true to my own heart and direction. The result is that, standing on shaky ground, I haven’t grown, nor have I been inspired to move my life work forward in positive ways.
My work with horses isn’t simply a job to me. It resonates in every way in my life, sending ripples through all of my relationships. In partnership with horses, I’m able to explore the Circle in deeper, more meaningful ways, and I’m able to share this gift with others. I can’t simply duplicate some one else’s business model, or copy the practices that I don’t, at heart, agree with. I have to go back to square one and re-build. I began to understand this several weeks ago. The beaver’s appearance in my life was a powerful reminder and a catalyst for much-needed change.
So, as I venture into the New Year, I go deeper into my own foundational work, re-focus, re-write, re-structure, creating a balanced base. I change the flow within me and around me in ways that help me to stand in my own power and that will benefit others.
Megwitch (thank you) to the Beaver for her life and spirit and for the messages she brings, which I’m sure will continue to unfold with greater meaning as I move forward in the coming months …
I looked to my right as we drove down the gravel road to the barn, my attention drawn in the direction of Rich’s question.
I didn’t know. It looked like a small deer or a dog, lying in the brown grass, probably dead. While Rich began the afternoon feeding, I walked alone up pasture to solve the mystery. What I found brought me to tears.
It was the body of a large, dead beaver, lying at least 30 feet from the creek. She was on her back, and when I rolled her over, I noticed fresh blood coming from a hole by her ear. She probably hadn’t been dead for more than an hour, though I was sure she’d suffered far longer than that. Some one, somewhere along the creek, shot her in the head and left her for dead. She must have followed the creek to the ford where our horses cross into the upper pasture, and she made an agonizing crawl onto land to a place where we’d notice her.
I reached my hand down to touch her, stroking her fur, tears brimming in my eyes as I apologized over and over for the stupidity of humans, for their cruelty. All animals die, I know, but they don’t need to suffer as this beaver obviously did.
She was enormous, perhaps 60 pounds or more. This was a beautiful, elder beaver – a longtime caretaker and nurturer of the area’s wetlands. I wondered, given the circumstances of her death, how she managed to make it into this horse pasture … and why.
Rich joined me and we held hands, looking over her body. Rich was so angry. True, my husband is a hunter, but he respects life and doesn’t kill needlessly. We eat what he brings home and he prays for the animal spirits who provide us with their meat and skins.
Standing over this beaver, we made a decision to take her home and honor her in the Old Way. We made an offering and said our prayers for her spirit; we took her home and offered tobacco and sage.
Again, I wondered why she’d come to us. I think, in part, her spirit traveled and knew that we’d find her and treat her respectfully – that we’d honor her life and sing her over. We’d keep her skin to remember her. Also I think she offered herself as a messenger for us.
What is the message of the Beaver? As one of nature’s finest architects, much of what Beaver teaches is about foundational work, flow and harmony. She goes about her building industriously, with an eye to the larger scheme of things. Left to her own devices, she changes the flow of water, the flow of energy around her, for the benefit of all. She creates balance in our rivers and wet places. Spiritually, this is also the balance and flow of our emotions.
It came to me the next morning, in a place between sleep and waking, that her message for me is very much about attending to my own foundation. This beaver appeared in the pasture where my horses live, and the foundation of my work with the horses has recently been in personal question.
I’ve realized that the people I accepted as role models, while doing their own valued brand of teaching, don’t share my personal philosophies. We aren’t coming from the same place, and by modeling them, I’ve come to understand that I haven’t been true to my own heart and direction. The result is that, standing on shaky ground, I haven’t grown, nor have I been inspired to move my life work forward in positive ways.
My work with horses isn’t simply a job to me. It resonates in every way in my life, sending ripples through all of my relationships. In partnership with horses, I’m able to explore the Circle in deeper, more meaningful ways, and I’m able to share this gift with others. I can’t simply duplicate some one else’s business model, or copy the practices that I don’t, at heart, agree with. I have to go back to square one and re-build. I began to understand this several weeks ago. The beaver’s appearance in my life was a powerful reminder and a catalyst for much-needed change.
So, as I venture into the New Year, I go deeper into my own foundational work, re-focus, re-write, re-structure, creating a balanced base. I change the flow within me and around me in ways that help me to stand in my own power and that will benefit others.
Megwitch (thank you) to the Beaver for her life and spirit and for the messages she brings, which I’m sure will continue to unfold with greater meaning as I move forward in the coming months …
