Stony Mesa Sagas. Chip Ward

You nailed it. You know more about this than I do. You are one smart woman, Luna Waxwing, and I am very impressed.”

      Luna smiled and arched her brows again. “And that’s what I know about the mammal. We might save the lesson about the other kind of beaver for later.”

      The path up the side of the mountain was easy to follow as far as horses could go. In fact, horse dumplings littered the path. Luna was reminded of the story of Hansel and Gretel, who left bread crumbs on their path through the dark woods so they could find their way back to their home. Were horse dumplings like those bread crumbs if you were lost? She remembered when she was doing her turn at the hoods-in-the-woods program, how exciting and reassuring it was to come upon fresh horse turds because they were a sure sign she was near to some kind of civilization, even if it was the modest version offered in Boon County’s little towns. Today she was eager to go in the other direction, as far away from the noise and contention of the manmade world as she could get.

      They spelled each other carrying the box of beavers, two people on each side of the box. The terrain was uneven and it was hard to balance the load. Sometimes the path was so narrow that they had to squeeze sideways to avoid rock walls and tight trees. Where the trail was intersected by ravines and loose talus, it became faint. It was apparent that the route was not favored by hikers and had not been maintained. Thick moss on north-facing rocks was lush and unbroken by heel or hoof.

      Off the south shore of a still pond they saw a long-abandoned beaver hut of chewed and stripped branches that looked like no more than a random catch of brambles. A closer examination showed its thin-boned architecture was bleached and dry. A ghost hut. There it is, they whispered, as if the beavers were already living there and shouldn’t be alarmed.

      Beavers, Hoppy and Luna realized, are not as cute up close as they are in photos. A beaver is a wet rodent that smells like its mud hut. They have big sharp teeth. You don’t cuddle them, you treat them carefully with respect.

      There were four beavers, youngsters both male and female. They were caged in specially designed crates to let in air but not enough light to agitate them. In the dark, they were calm. A beaver spends much of her life in a mud lodge covered with gnawed sticks and mud that is spread and patted in place with a broad, flat tail. To a beaver, darkness is familiar and comforting.

      The crates were heavy and had to be carried from the Forest Service truck to a place deemed to be likely habitat by the conservation biologist assigned to the project. That’s why Hoppy was along. The Forest Service relied on volunteers like him to help when extra hands and strong backs were required. The Forest Service crew was pleased that Luna was as strong or even stronger than most of the men among them. Luna tried hard not to show off.

      To be sure that the beavers would build where they were placed, a small weatherproof speaker would be mounted at the base of a tree. It would play the sound of gurgling water day and night. The biologist explained that the beavers responded to the sound of water and would build where they heard it. The recording system was in a box with brackets and a hood to keep rain and snow off. There was a small solar unit to keep it charged. All of that equipment had to be ferried up the mountain on steep forest trails. By the time they arrived at their destination, they needed to sit, rehydrate, eat, stretch, and catch their collective breath.

      The release itself was not dramatic. At first the beavers clung to their dark crates. The bright sunlight that hit them when the carriers were opened was startling and they were paralyzed by it. When they recovered, they left as fast as they could scramble away. They crossed a small creek and found a pool of water where they stopped and turned back. Soon they were carrying sticks to the small trickle of gurgle-enhanced water.

      The trip down the mountain was quick compared to their ascent. With no heavy cargo to haul, they felt so light they practically flew down the trail. Hoppy and Luna removed their gloves and shook hands with the Forest Service staff at the trailhead. Cell numbers were exchanged. The conservation biologist who was in charge was impressed enough with their help that she offered to extend their adventure.

      “There’s a remnant colony up on the other side of Sleeping Maiden that I want to visit tomorrow. If you can stay another day, I’d be glad to take you with me.” Mary Handy was a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service. She’d spent a lot of time arguing with her fellow rangers over the wisdom of reintroducing a species that ranchers hated. Many of her colleagues lived in town and went to church with the ranchers they regulated. Beavers were an especially tough sell in a community that regarded science as one more liberal ideology. Beavers, according to one prominent county commissioner, were an “environmentalist plot.” It was affirming for Mary to have two smart young people along who understood her and embraced her mission.

      Hoppy and Luna jumped at the chance to see the remnant colony farther along the mountain. Plans were made to meet the following morning. They drove away into the rose light of the evening that was spreading across the horizon. Hoppy and Luna were close to euphoric.

      In their mid-twenties, they belonged to a generation that was raised with the specter of environmental catastrophe. The many ways human behavior destroys the living world were underlined constantly. Our discarded plastic fills the ocean and sea birds choke on it. Automobile exhaust warms the planet and sets off dangerous storms and droughts. The coal that fires our lights and television screens fills mountain lakes with mercury. An exploding human population eats up habitat and endangers hundreds of species—elephants, tigers, rhinos, frogs, birds, an ark’s worth of unique and beautiful creatures. Hoppy and Luna grew up with the depressing awareness that almost everything they did somehow contributed to the destruction of the living world they cherished.

      The upside of their ecological literacy was wonder and gratitude, the restoration of awe grounded in knowledge. The downside was that they saw nature’s wounds and understood their own complicity. The simple question asked by grocery checkers, “paper or plastic?” translated to them as, “kill a tree or choke a seal?”

      So the afternoon with the beavers was different. For once they were on the right side of life, contributing instead of taking away. The hard work hauling the crates with their wild contents was cleansing, redeeming in a way they had never felt before. It was validating and humbling at once, both visceral and cerebral, even spiritual.

      The next day was unseasonably cold and wet, not rain so much as a fine and steady drizzle. The hike to the remnant colony was slick with mud. They grabbed ahold of shrubs to pull themselves up the steep slopes, then scrambled over ledges of loose rocks. Hoppy stopped twice to catch his breath. They were close to nine thousand feet elevation and the air felt light and non-nourishing as he sucked it into his aching lungs. As they got closer to the colony, the land grew moist and verdant. They saw abundant birds and critters flitting through the undergrowth. The beavers on Doe Creek under the south escarpment of Sleeping Maiden Mountain had only survived because they were so far up above the drainage that people with traps and guns couldn’t reach them easily. The colony was impossible to reach by horseback and all-terrain vehicles were not allowed.

      Luna slipped, hitting her knee on a rock. It bled but wasn’t serious. Hoppy twisted his ankle on an exposed root. It was also not a serious injury, but he was followed up and down the mountain by a nagging pain.

      They would later conclude it was one of the hardest days of their young lives, not so much because of the demanding hike to the remnant colony and the lousy weather but because of what they found there.

       Chapter 8

      Elias Buchman and Otis agreed to meet at a local café for coffee. Otis was nervous and was on his second cup before Elias got there. He had never been in trouble aside from a few drunken encounters with things that were not there, like the time he braked for a phantom cow, spilled beer all over himself, and was rear-ended by Dunk Taylor’s patrol car. But those were the exceptions. He was once an eagle scout, a lifeguard, and he broke onto Stony Mesa’s political scene as the chief of the volunteer fire department. Heck, he didn’t even read mystery novels and preferred PBS science shows to the popular crime dramas. Being accused of a murder he did not commit was like landing in a foreign country where he didn’t speak the language and didn’t