By Heather Bortolussi
GrizzlyCorps fellows Clay and Heather signing beaver atop their beaver dam analogue.
“These people are so freaking cool, dude,” my coworker, Jeremy, told me every day leading up to BLAB, “I am going to that training every year until I die.” This was about to be his third consecutive year going to Build Like a Beaver (BLAB), and his excitement for it is still rubbing off on me to this day.
Over at Western Shasta RCD in the early days of October, we were in the midst of a busy field season, but he was determined to make anything work for us to go to this training. So, after convincing our district manager, Jeremy and I packed up the truck and left the office at four in the morning on the second day of the four-day training, with plans to return the next evening.
We (he) drove through Lassen National Forest; I woke up, after promising not to fall asleep, to an orange sun rising parallel to a familiarly winding road. You know, your perspective changes a lot driving West to East instead of East to West. With sleepy eyes and confused otoliths, it took a minute to recognize this as the road that brought my past self, full of nervous energy and excitement for what was to come, to my new home just over a month before this morning. Headed east this time, my new destination was ahead.
Sunrise over CA-44 E.
When we eventually arrived at the training’s campsite, steam was rising over boiling water, people were bundled in hats and gloves along with every single piece of clothing they brought, the sky was blue, and there was tired chattering in between sips of hot tea and coffee. The nipping cold was refreshing after a long and hot September. As time crept towards 8:30 and the sun inched up into the open sky, still chattering from the cold and the company, people began gathering in their chairs around a man in flip flops standing in front of the center stage pine. The day began.
Now when I tell you that this man sounded exactly like if Owen Wilson was a radical environmentalist, I mean it. It was like if Lightning McQueen was in the middle of the woods, teaching you how to build beaver dams. And if Lightning McQueen is teaching you how to build beaver dams, you listen.
Owen Wilson (not the real Owen Wilson) walked us through the plan for the day and invited introductions for newcomers like Jeremy and I. The leaders of this training all introduced themselves: sixteen instructors from thirteen different agencies– NGOs, government agencies, nonprofits, and private organizations– collaborating harmoniously in true process-based restoration fashion. As explained by Owen Wilson in front of that big Jeffery pine, the Build Like a Beaver (BLAB) training is organized and run by Cal-PBR Network, of which each instructor is a member. The PBR of Cal-PRB Network stands for process-based restoration: a restoration framework that, as given in the name, is implemented to restore the processes– biological, physical, geomorphological– of degraded river and stream catchments by harnessing the systems' natural fluvial and biological energy.
Process-based restoration invites conversation with the stream. It gives the stream room to move, change, and to respond to inputs of energy– whether that response be high flow after a rain event, increased vegetation growth from lots of sunshine, or a beaver dam enhancing sediment recruitment– and it gives us the responsibility to listen. In stark contrast, PBR’s restoration framework predecessor which uses concrete and heavy machinery, form-based restoration (FBR) tells the stream how it's going to be and for what outcomes it’s going to behave. As put by Owen Wilson: “When you try to produce something permanent and unchanging within the domain of change itself – you're fighting against the system. Instead of telling the river to hold still, we are having a long-form jazz improv conversation with the river.”
Through these listening conversations, Cal-PBR aims to increase the capacity of a degraded river and stream ecosystem to retain water, support biodiversity, create fire resiliency, and adapt to climate change. To achieve this mission, Cal-PBR is building a collaborative network of people to build beaver dam analogs (BDAs) specifically through trainings (BLAB!) and volunteer events.
But you may be wondering, what are beaver dam analogs? Prior to this training, I assumed they were similar to bat or bird boxes, a home for beavers. This was not the case. While they do promote beaver habitat and beaver reintroduction, BDAs aim to mirror the pinnacle role that beaver-built beaver dams play in riparian systems and in natural stream processes. Depending on the restoration goals for a specific stream, several BDA structures of varying sizes and materials can be built throughout a reach of a stream. Constructed out of living and nonliving materials found on site, BDAs back up short stretches of a stream, which slows down the flow of water and causes water levels to rise. In turn, this amassing of water, resources, and energy feed the stream’s natural processes, creating a regenerative, self maintaining complex system that increases connectivity in the stream channel, connects the water table and wetland vegetation, catches sediment and increases deposition, provides habitat for a web of aquatic species, and ultimately creates an ever changing and complexifying, resilient watershed ecosystem.
BLAB attendees and instructors gathered around a previously constructed BDA.
After the morning discussion that built the lens of a watershed and the lens of PBR, we headed down to the stream to observe previously built BDAs through our new (and fashionable) watershed glasses. We spent a few hours looking at the successful and less successful structures, understanding the balancing act of land uses, and hearing a multitude of interpretations of the stream's reply from each instructor's area of expertise.
Left: Balancing along a BDA on the site tour. Right: Drawn and labeled map of the stream showing where the group decided to build a BDA.
The main activity of the day began after lunch. In small teams equipped with an instructor, we headed to the reach of the stream where we would be building structures tomorrow. With colored tape, a blank sheet of paper, and half a mile of stream to cover, we started reading the landscape and imagining. Imagining historically what processes might have led to the present day and imagining what the most possible connectivity and slowed flow might look like. As we meandered along the banks and stream corridor, we visualized as a group how the stream might reply if we built a BDA. “It might blow out the BDA we wanted to build upstream… well what if we built a bigger one upstream and have this one be smaller to supplement slowing the flow… the banks are a little high here and we don’t have enough materials nearby to build one that reaches across the stream entirely… what if we move it a little bit downstream and use that live willow as an anchor?” After coming to an agreement on where to build our BDA, we tied some flagging to the spot, drew it on our meandering map, and continued downstream to ask the stream some more questions.
By the end of this afternoon's activity, my brain was exhausted but still questioning quietly. When you examine the world around you through the lens of a watershed, it’s hard to not start examining your own inner world through the lens of a watershed, too. How do I respond to disturbances? What happens when there is high flow in my life? How much flow can I take? How do I slow down or process the flow? Do I have the space to meander, move, and wiggle like a stream or are there structures in my life keeping me rigid and unchanging? How am I a regenerative and resilient complex system like the streams we’ll be waist-deep in tomorrow?
The group gathered around the pine tree for lightning talks.
We returned to camp after a long day. The evening was decorated with string lights, the most delicious camp food you’ve ever tasted, laughter, and a bright moon dangling in the deep navy sky. Gathered around the pine once again, members of the training got up in front of the crowd to share a lightning talk. There was juggling, guitar playing, poem reciting, and project pitching. We laughed, we cried, and the day was brought to a restful and joyful end.
Cold and sleepy camp morning.
The next morning started just as the first: chattering, hot drinks, hats. But there was excitement in the air unlike that of the first day. Excitement for what was to come– the main course– getting into the streams and actually building some well placed, well considered beaver dam analogs. The sun slowly warmed us in our morning debrief around the pine, taking over the job of my now lukewarm tea. Everyone started to gear up: waders on, gloves in pocket, and tool in hand. Then, the group of us clomped our way down to the stream. We walked along the bank like we had yesterday, just more loudly and awkwardly, and reasoned with each other why we felt a BDA should or shouldn’t be constructed at each flagged spot. After some debate, we split off into our teams led by instructors and started to get our hands dirty.
We started dragging, staggering, and piling the large pine and willow branches that were harvested from the surrounding area. Some began gathering mud from the banks using their shovels while others took some loppers and started breaking down the pine branches into smaller, weavable segments. Anchoring off an exposed boulder and the bank, we started piling big branches and little branches across the entire width of the stream. On top of that pile we layered a thick covering of mud, almost building a wall on the upstream side of our stick pile. On top of the mud, more branches. This time taking care to stuff and weave the smaller branches diagonally with tufts of pine needles facing upstream as a line of defense against the flow of the stream.
Mud. Sticks. Stuff. Mud. Sticks. Stuff.
Within an hour of mudding, sticking, and stuffing, the small group of us began to realize that the stream that originally came up to our shins was now well above our knees and rising. We stepped back onto the land and saw that on the bend just upstream of where we were working, the water had begun to challenge the height of the bank allowing for a small trickle to pool and roll towards a downstream portion of our reach. Just as we had imagined on our walk-through the day before, the unfinished BDA was already increasing the connectivity of the stream exactly where we had expected. Thrilled by the instantaneous gratification of our BDA efforts, we continued to actualize our questions for the stream into mud and stick lasagna.
Our BDA after just an hour or two!
So wrapped up in our own structure, I forgot that our efforts were being magnified ten times over down stream. We took a break and headed down the same bank once again, but this time walking alongside an unrecognizable stream. All within a half day of our collective action, the water level had risen, the flow had slown, sediment was catching, and small channels were laterally connecting the floodplain with the surrounding riparian habitat. Everything we had asked the stream was already beginning to be answered. It was amazing. You could feel the entire group's energy and excitement.
But, these structures were just the beginning of the conversation with this stream. The winter is coming, rain and snow will bring changes to the flow, the dwindling sunlight will affect the biological energy available, and these changing inputs will be transformed through the processes of the stream. Although we can get hints of what the stream thinks of our BDA’s, we will have to wait until the winter and spring have run their course to hear what impact our BDA has had on the stream's processes.
While we would have loved to have stayed to hear what the stream had to say on the last day of the training, RCD duties called. Plucked away like when your Mom would come to pick you up from a playdate with your best friend as a kid, I climbed out the stream, waved goodbye to my new beaver friends, and headed back to camp.
The walk back to camp.
“Those people were so freaking cool,” I said to Jeremy on our journey back home on that same road through Lassen National Forest. This time awake and still wearing my watershed-tinted glasses, I had time to revisit the questions I asked myself.
Almost two months into the service year (and two hundred and sixty-nine months into my life), and so much has changed. There has been so much disturbance to the way things were yesterday, two months ago, and two hundred and sixty-nine months ago. New beginnings, heartbreaking ends, many distances traveled, connections made, growing pains, and continuous learning and unlearning. I have moved from coast to coast, started a new position, moved into a random lady’s house, memorized forty-five faces and their associated names, created time-standing friendships with those forty-five faces, became part of a new community, got my firefighter-type II training done, admired California’s native flora and fauna, learned how to build beaver dams to restore watershed ecosystems, educated America’s youth how to do stream monitoring, planted hundreds of native species, and have become a regular at the Redding roller rink.
It’s been a high flow for two months, to say the least. But now, more than ever in my life, I am a meandering stream, not a rigid channel of water, with the time, space, and energy to process and embrace these ebbs and flows of life.
I am so grateful to be wearing the badges of time passing (and of course the badge of a Grizzly) and to have something (this blog post!) to show for the ever-growing complexity of life. Thank you to Western Shasta RCD for letting Jeremy and I go to BLAB, thank you to Cal-PBR for embracing collaboration, and thank you BLAB instructors for such an
inspiring two days full of questioning and listening.
Newly initiated beavers, Clay and Heather, rejoicing in their collective BDA success!
“I am a beaver believer!”
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