beaver hide - goofy romantic

Can't sleep, won't sleep, whatever. I'll miss Joe when he's not available for impromptu lessons in life. He seemed ancient when I met him nineteen years ago. Rife with wealth in wisdom earned through hard years of the poverty called subsistence, he's a prize. As Mum has offered socks crafted with the accuracy of many years of attentive practice, so has Joe and an example of his brand of mastery in the gift of this raw hide. I've always been lucky I suppose, but just now I'm feeling heaps of love.

At one time I would have thought this a rather gruesome offering, but that's not so now. I've learnt a bit more about sharpening knives since that time for one thing. For another, my attitudes about the wild environment around me have changed dramatically. The contrast between what it was like idealistically looking at "the wild" from a position more removed from the cycles then and now are profound. Like a wood lot, things die and are born. Like my experience, things are sometimes wasted at the hands of avarice or some other shortcoming but, can be made beautiful when spiced liberally with integrity.

I've never been much in the loop of fashion and being so happy to have this fur, taken from our river, is no doubt several steps out of sync with much of what passes for fashionable.

As long as I've known Joe he's taught us how to take without raping and how to give with an open heart. The beaver have shared this too, but few of us have the patience to listen that closely to their lessons. I'm so grateful to live where man doesn't dominate.

I'll have to count the tiny nail holes around the perimeter of this hide. There seems to be one every centimeter or so. The skin side is hard and smooth enough to be shiny. No fat or muscle fiber left to spoil it. Now to find someone to tan it well.


Beaver pelt - skin side with loonie



Fur side