Busy as a Beaver
I am drawn to the phrases that bring animals into the mix. Our furry or feathered kin have so many lessons to teach us.
Last week at the Pelican Rapids Public Library where I’ve been finding myself hosting crafting nights for a group of people to prepare for a community offrenda/altar for Day of the Dead we found ourselves discussing ducks. Many of us live out in the country and chatter often devolves into farm life. The tending of goats, chickens, donkeys and other creatures turned to someone mentioning they’d like to keep ducks.
I learned why they say the phrase “sitting ducks” I responded.
Intrigued, the chatter dimmed and all ears were on me.
“Well, their prey response when threatened is to play dead.” I continued. “Easy pickings for a fox” I sadly ended.
Vaimo and I had lost about six Peking ducks, gorgeous, noble white fowl. To woodland and prairie predators who enjoyed them as we might have in other contexts.
I too would like to keep ducks. But alas, I know why they call them sitting ducks.
There’s a new beaver dam or at least a muskrat home under construction at the edge of the pond we tend. I’m hoping it’s a busy beaver. Though that comes with its own challenges I suppose. There are plenty of trees to gnaw around here though, and if I’ve learned nothing from living on this little patch of OTC it is that the only constant is change. The shore line will take a new shape, if beaver takes some of the trees. The oaks need to be thinned anyways.
I like the idea of the busy beaver. It helps me feel like work is a worthy way to spend one’s time. Or maybe lessons of the beaver is that she shows us that work, and the product of our efforts amounts to something. The busy beaver helps me note that laboring as a part of our days has purpose, and it’s not just an obligation for the dystopian late stage capitalism we all can name as a constant companion in the forms of financial fretting and worrying. I love knowing that all animals are free from these anxieties. Beaver doesn’t care about stock returns, or tariffs, or tax rates, but Beaver works none the less. What a beautiful model of work not tied to an exchange of money. What a beautiful possibility to imagine new economies.
I’m fighting the urge to tell you what kind of laboring I’ve been up to since my last newsletter. I know it matters, but also it doesn’t. I’ve been painting and quilting and writing grants and prepping for a class that begins on Saturday. I’ve been refreshing my email only to be met with a fellowship rejection. I’ve been in therapy to try to overcome the panic that sets in when I think about teaching the aforementioned class as an official community faculty member at a university. I’ve been listening to fiction and wishing I had time to sit and hold a book and drink tea and slow down.
I won’t get into all the details, but there are the gists of it. I am too busy for my own good and yet, I am still trying my best to be good to myself. Thank goodness for my love who makes sure I eat. My sweet Vaimo has made delightful egg salad from our hens’ gifts, and goes to pick up my favorite sourdough bread from a nearby community baker herbalist whose products help heal my troubles. I’ve been spending time at the yoga studio. And sometimes, when my busy beaver ways become overwhelming cut that first off my schedule.
But I have this show going up with my artist friend Ilaamen and I drop my paintings off on Wednesday. I’d do the math to think through how many days that is from now but I might freak out. As of this writing 4 of the 6 paintings I will bring for the show are ready to go. I can’t spend too much time worrying about the trees I need for the dam, I just must go and get them.
You know I love a synchronicity and the reason why this is all on my mind is because there is a beaver in my painting I’m trying to desperately finish up for drop off next week. WHY do I have a beaver in a painting about the last supper? I don’t know. But I know that it needed to be done, and so here we are. I must just take the trees and branches I find and artful arrange them to serve as a place of safety and respite.
If I can just do that perhaps I will hold it together enough to get to the end of this tunnel.
The busy beaver can, and so shall I.
I hope you’ll join me to celebrate my newest works and this Duo Show that will debut at the Kaddatz Galleries soon. Next week I’ll share more with you about the show and the themes, since the paintings will no longer be my most immediate of concerns.
With love, hope, and optimism amongst my busy beaver ways,
KCF