The end of the year is a time for lists. Our Ten Favorite Books, Twelve Movies We Loved, Twenty-Seven TikToks that Perfectly Captured the National Mood in 2022. We’re a society obsessed with rankings — with the quantification of media, the comparison of culture, the litanization of everything. We writers are the worst of the bunch. Year-end lists are our most valuable currencies: Our book’s placement on any Top Ten is proof that our work was remembered beyond the moment of its publication, that somebody, anybody, thought we mattered.
Anyway. Over the last twelve months I read some books, saw some movies, watched some shows. Mostly, though, I spent 2022 sloshing around beaver ponds. So, without further ado, here are Ten Beaver Dams I Absolutely Adored in 2022.
10.
Check out this retaining wall! Usually beavers dam at narrow stream pinch-points, where minimal labor can produce maximal results, but here they built a low, long bulwark across the floodplain. Tough work, but worth it.
9.
Hard to beat the view up Cottonwood Creek.
8.
Every year the federal government kills 20,000 beavers, and private trappers take tens of thousands more, mostly for the perceived sin of flooding public infrastructure and private property. So it’s always exciting to stumble upon a potential conflict that road crews have attempted to solve through flow devices and other nonlethal means.
7.
Truly spectacular terracing. Did beavers inspire lochs?
6.
One of the wonderful things about beaver landscapes is that they’re inherently cyclic: As beavers come and go, the ecosystems they create gradually transition, from pond to wetland to wet meadow to forest and back again. I like that you can see that process beginning in this impoundment, which has been abandoned for a few years and is already moving on to its next incarnation.
5.
Just classic.
4.
An absolute behemoth. Check out the lodge, as well as the faint foraging trail leading up the far hillside and into the aspen forest.
3.
They always use more rock than you realize, as they did on this nifty little dam on the Blue River.
2.
This dam, which I came upon soon after moving to Colorado, is the work of an admirably active colony. As winter turned to spring, this became my go-to spot for beaver-watching, and I can’t wait to return once this pond emerges again from the snow.
1.
I’ll never get sick of admiring this flawless radial arc. Simple, elegant, economical — a haiku made of wood and rock. Dam of the year.
2 thoughts on “The Best Dam Year-End List”
I loved the label–“Dam of the year”–and how it spins in my head, first as what it is as a marker of rank based on merit and your personal preference. Then, there is the way the phrase trips in my head, and suggests “this dam year” and “the damndest of years.” And then the etymology of the word dam itself is fascinating, from the Old Norse, or as a derivation of the Old English verb fordemman “to stop up, block.” A word perfect in that it seems to feel like what it describes–a slam, a slap, a way of fixing in place something with wood gnawed by large teeth.
I’m trying to think of my own unconventional candidates for a top ten list.
And so, I give you my own navel-gazing tribute to the top ten surfaces upon which I have walked or stood this past year:
10. the wooden planks warped by several north country winters that lead up what I refer to as my frog pond.
9. the flooded area near the Grasse River that fills with water only after a winter’s worth of snow melts. To trespass it you must stick to the small rises and hillocks formed by what pressure or growth, I cannot say.
8. the gum covered sidewalk outside of Newark International Airport where I stood for maybe six hours out of the eight I spent waiting for a flight to Iceland, my first flight anywhere in at least ten years.
7. the rocky path through a long-dried lava field in Iceland upon which I road an Icelandic horse whose name might have been Rose Rose.
6. the covered in ice yet still flowing streamlet that ran alongside the house I used to live in. I stood in this unlikely spot for many days as I decided what to do next. I sometimes stood on ice, on snow, on mood alone, on leaves sometimes long compressed and turned confetti like and at other times strangely preserved. What life might emerge from such a spontaneous and temperamental stream, I asked?
5. the giant rocks near the place where I went to swim the current everyday this summer. Its glacial potholes sometimes held still and silent frogs waiting for food.
4. the many shaded brown and blue carpet–so stain forgiving–in my apartment. If one gets close, one might glimpse remnants of spilled cocoa, splatters of my children’s paint, dirt and mud I’ve brought in on my boots and running shoes.
3. the black ice upon which I didn’t slip when I went running at night after a long day of what stress I cannot now remember.
2. the trucked in sand used to make a “beach” at the small lake near my mother’s house.
1. the linoleum floor in the classroom where I taught “wayfinding” (which is just another word for writing).
I loved the label–“Dam of the year”–and how it spins in my head, first as what it is as a marker of rank based on merit and your personal preference. Then, there is the way the phrase trips in my head, and suggests “this dam year” and “the damndest of years.” And then the etymology of the word dam itself is fascinating, from the Old Norse, or as a derivation of the Old English verb fordemman “to stop up, block.” A word perfect in that it seems to feel like what it describes–a slam, a slap, a way of fixing in place something with wood gnawed by large teeth.
I’m trying to think of my own unconventional candidates for a top ten list.
And so, I give you my own navel-gazing tribute to the top ten surfaces upon which I have walked or stood this past year:
10. the wooden planks warped by several north country winters that lead up what I refer to as my frog pond.
9. the flooded area near the Grasse River that fills with water only after a winter’s worth of snow melts. To trespass it you must stick to the small rises and hillocks formed by what pressure or growth, I cannot say.
8. the gum covered sidewalk outside of Newark International Airport where I stood for maybe six hours out of the eight I spent waiting for a flight to Iceland, my first flight anywhere in at least ten years.
7. the rocky path through a long-dried lava field in Iceland upon which I road an Icelandic horse whose name might have been Rose Rose.
6. the covered in ice yet still flowing streamlet that ran alongside the house I used to live in. I stood in this unlikely spot for many days as I decided what to do next. I sometimes stood on ice, on snow, on mood alone, on leaves sometimes long compressed and turned confetti like and at other times strangely preserved. What life might emerge from such a spontaneous and temperamental stream, I asked?
5. the giant rocks near the place where I went to swim the current everyday this summer. Its glacial potholes sometimes held still and silent frogs waiting for food.
4. the many shaded brown and blue carpet–so stain forgiving–in my apartment. If one gets close, one might glimpse remnants of spilled cocoa, splatters of my children’s paint, dirt and mud I’ve brought in on my boots and running shoes.
3. the black ice upon which I didn’t slip when I went running at night after a long day of what stress I cannot now remember.
2. the trucked in sand used to make a “beach” at the small lake near my mother’s house.
1. the linoleum floor in the classroom where I taught “wayfinding” (which is just another word for writing).
Thank you, Ben Goldfarb!