Part of adapting is resting

This is a beaver habitat not far from Carbon Based headquarters. At a bend in the road, the beavers have clogged a culvert and made a pond that stretches back into the woods. The Cornwall town crew periodically cleans it out, but their enemies wait until the backhoe leaves, and then it's back to work. They leave the rusted metal grate to one side, I assume so that the beavers don't use it as a lattice for their mud and twig dam.

It takes them just a few days to block the flow of water again, and then it's back to beaver heaven. When I was taking this shot, a sullen beaver did figure-eights in front of me and slapped his tail on the water. He probably sent the same warning to the neighbor piloting the backhoe.

Unlike the beavers, though, I take breaks occasionally. I'll be with friends for a Christmas meal, enjoying a respite from the litany of troubles that constitute our beat: ice melt, sea level rise, floods, droughts, disasters, infestations, contaminations, pollutions, corruptions....