Quehanna Wild Area: Beaver, Set at Ramming Speed

With a cold night coming up and possible frost warnings all over the place, my husband and I kicked around the idea of an overnight backpack into the Valley of the Elk in Quehanna. It was indeed chilly when we got up Thursday morning; good weather for backpacking.

In the end, though, we decided that with the holiday weekend coming up, and with potentially lots more people heading for the woods on Friday, a long day hike would suit us better than an overnighter. So we packed up and headed for the Quehanna Wild Area just for the day.

My husband had a daysack and a bag chair. I had a daysack and a stadium chair; I can sort of tuck the stadium chair under my daysack, which leaves my arms free for careening all around the wilderness, and even better, taking pictures!

With not a single other person or car in the parking lot, we packed up our gear and hiked back to our campsite in the Valley of the Elk. A little side view got us some glimpses of an osprey on the nest: one little white bird head and a bunch of sticks.

There are still tadpoles and newts in the puddles but amphibian activity is not as crazy as it was earlier in spring. The water in the creeks is low, with stinky smells and green moss on every rock. We could use more rain.

We hiked into our campsite and hung out among the evergreens on the hill, then sat on a favorite rock overlooking the valley. We did not hear or see any elk on this day, but then again, you don't usually, during the standard daylight hours.

We'd packed ham and cheese sandwiches for our trip, and snacks too, and I'd hoped to pick up a quart or two of chili (for now or later) at Benton's in Karthaus. But when we'd stopped in on the way to Quehanna, they were just getting started on the chili. So there was no chili for us on this day!

We had our wading shoes but decided with the temps being so reasonable and the water so icky that we did not need to go wading. I did take my camera and walk straight down the hill below my rock to the creek. By the time I'd walked down along it and then back up the hill, I was toasty.

So I doffed most of my clothes and aired things out on the rock. Nothing like a little nature bathing! "Boy will YOU be ready when the rattlesnakes get here," my husband observed, helpfully.

And then we packed our things up and started to head back out, taking a little side trip to check out a beaver dam that's been built just below a nearby bridge, flooding it and cutting it off from the main trail.

I actually leapt onto the bridge to get some photos, but alas no beavers came out to perform for me. "It's time to go," my husband said. And I got off my bridge and my husband was headed back up the trail ahead of me, when lo and behold, we saw a BEAVER swimming right toward us!

The happy moment when we first saw the beaver is documented in the photo above. Doesn't it look adorable? It was swimming down toward its lodge, then turned around and came back toward us. There is a closer view of the beaver in the extra photos.

It was with a slow step (but a fist pump! because I got the SHOT!) that I left the beaver area, for I imagined there were more photos and videos to be had. But we needed to start heading home, and so we packed up and walked out, back to our car, back to our house. And so it was that we reluctantly left the green woods and the wilds of Quehanna behind us.

I have two photos so I have two songs to go with this story of our eight-mile day. First, for the beaver who dominates this tale, a song about a boat. For the beaver seemed like a tiny boat on its own little waterway. Here is Lyle Lovett, with If I Had a Boat.

And here is a song for the wildness that lives inside each of us. I hope you get a chance to go to the wild areas, and experience the freedom of sitting on a favorite rock over a favorite valley somewhere in the big, green woods. Here is Barbra Streisand, with Barry Gibb and the song Run Wild, arguably the best track on the 1980 album Guilty.