A Beaver Saved My Life
Things I Learned Outside #1
This essay is the first in a series I am calling Things I Learned Outside. These are stories from before I got Long COVID and ME/CFS. They are the adventures that have made me who I am today. Some are joyful, some are sad, some are funny. I hope they give our blog context and variety. Enjoy!
I was looking for a sign. In the past two years, I had become a shell of the person I thought I was. After dropping out of college in California for the second time, I moved back home to be near family and lick my wounds.
I lived with my grandparents for several months before finding a cheap basement room near the University of Maryland. My housemates were a young couple who barely spoke and a grad student who liked to come downstairs in the middle of the night, reeking of Miller Lite, and explain to me how to play the electric guitar.
I took a few classes at the college, but I often walked out in the middle of lectures, which I found desperately boring and overstuffed with frat boys. I spent most of my free time watching Netflix in my windowless room and combing the local circulars for deals on hot dogs and rice.
I was lost. There was a persistent dull ache in my chest, and I was overpowered by lethargy. I was desperate for some relief.
One weekend, I decided it would be best to finally get out and explore the neighborhood, so I choked down half a bottle of cheap wine and set off down the rows of split-level houses, a journal clutched in my hand.
After rambling around drunkenly for a half-hour or so, I came across a bike trail tucked in front of a cul-de-sac and decided to follow it.
The neighborhood disappeared. I entered what seemed to be a fairytale woodland, with deer and squirrels darting around through the forest and mallard ducks floating in the bubbling stream. It was nothing like the Maryland I knew, all gray urban sprawl. I felt a slight loosening in my ribcage.
I followed the trail to a steep bridge. On the other side was a lake. It was gorgeous, glittering in the light of the setting sun, ringed by bike paths, with an island in the middle. Lovely little pavilions dotted the shore. Everything began to appear sharper.
I followed the path to a small peninsula and sat down under a tree with my journal, looking out over the water.
As I studied the lake, I saw something large and dark cutting through the surface. The figure swam right up to the edge and hopped out onto land. It was a beaver. A real, flesh-and-blood beaver, with big teeth and slick brown fur and a long, flat tail. I had never seen a beaver in real life. I scanned the area and saw another, and another, and another. I sat rapt, watching them glide to and fro. Tears began to roll down my cheeks.
The beavers were my sign. A reminder that the world could be beautiful, soft. That I deserved grace. I spent the next hour watching them as the light faded into the pastel pinks and purples of just after sunset.
I wish I could say that my evening with the beavers cured me, but my depression continued to be fierce and unrelenting. It became sharper, with teeth that could dig in and drive me to the edge of myself.
Most days I couldn’t get out of bed, but some days I was bursting with rage so powerful I felt like I would jump out of my skin if I didn’t move until I couldn’t any more. Whenever this happened, I went down to the lake to clear my head. I walked furiously around its perimeter, eyes down, breath heavy, until my fiery mind cooled a little. Usually, it took two laps. Three, on a bad night. I didn’t see the beavers again, but I wasn’t looking for beavers. I was looking to disappear.
One night in early spring, things were particularly bleak. It had been raining for days, and the ball of anguish inside me had been festering out of control until it completely clouded my vision. I didn’t feel safe in the house, so I went to the lake to do my laps.
It was after midnight, and the park was deserted. Everything looked brown—the streetlights, the fog, the light pollution from the city. I began walking the loop, stomping as hard as I could, wound too tightly to cry, jaw and fists clenched.
The first lap passed without my even noticing it. Then a second, and a third. Rain pummeled my hardened face, but I didn’t feel a drop. Something should be changing by now, I thought. Something always changes by now. But the knot inside me was tight as ever, and all I could hear was the thrumming of blood in my ears.
As I rounded the far edge of the lake for the fourth time, I heard a loud snap and looked up to see movement in the woods, about 30 yards away from me. I froze, an unpleasant sizzle of adrenaline ripping through me as I was met with the reality of being alone by a lake in the dead of night.
As I watched, a brown blob hurtled out of the woods directly towards me. It was massive. It looked to be about the size of a Labrador retriever, albeit much shorter and denser, and it was clearly very wet, as I could hear the squelch of its furry flesh on the pavement every time it smacked the ground. It heaved itself toward me like a 60-pound missile zeroed in on its target. I was immobilized. Squelch, squelch, squelch. Was I going to have to fight this thing? Squelch squelch squelch. I could see its beady eyes as it closed in.
Right as I was tensing for impact, the sound changed. The squelching turned into the scrabbling of claws on pavement, a “crch, crch, crch.” As I watched, the creature skidded towards the side of the path, drifting around the curve. It scrambled for purchase, but it had too much momentum and soon it was tumbling down the bank towards the lake.
As it reached the bottom of the bank, its spinning slowed. It came to a stop on its belly right at the edge of the water. For a long moment, it looked at me. Then, it looked down at its little feet in what was clearly an expression of deep shame and slipped sheepishly into the lake, disappearing once again into the darkness.
I stood frozen for a few more moments, watching the spot where it had been swimming, and then I heard the most unfamiliar sound of the evening coming out of my own throat. I was laughing, for what felt like the first time in years. I doubled over. Soon, I was crying, and laughing, and getting lighter, and untangling with every spasm of my diaphragm. The world is sad, I thought, and frustrating, and angry, but it is also fucking funny.
I love the way you write, Sage! Cheers to doing things that loosen our ribcage. 🫶 For me, that was reading this!
Love - it - feels like I am with you. Thank you!