Up and back Nebraska Notch trail, and beavers

Started out at the Stevensville trailhead with Brooklyn-the-pup. True spring asserting herself against the false spring melt from last week. Today it was around freezing, which honestly was perfect.

I wasn’t sure what to expect but Nebraska Notch Trail was ideal. The snow that remained was hard and icy, which made for great footing with microspikes and zero guilt about trail impact.

Via a narrow ribbon of hard snow, you could see exactly where every previous hikers chose to walk. It reminded me of why I love animal tracks in winter. They reveal an invisible world, displaying how unseen creature moves through a landscape.

Brooklyn was in her element. With only one other car at the trailhead, she ran off-leash the whole way. I was facinated watching her approach a stream crossing. Normally she bounds like a gangly bull, but here, she slows, picks her way to the very edge, and tests each step. Must be an evolutionary instinct to be aware of the dangers of ice and freezing water.

About 1.5 miles in, we hit the Long Trail intersection, then pushed a little further to a pond for lunch of canned fish and crackers. There was fresh beaver activity…

My family has developed a policy of quietly steering conversations away from beavers when I’m around, apparently aware that my interest in them runs deep. I won’t say they’re wrong. But this was genuinely exciting: the pond was almost certainly original beaver construction, probably abandoned generations ago when they’d eaten through the available food supply. Beavers typically move on when the trees they favor are gone. But give it enough decades, and those trees come back — and apparently, they have. A new family has moved in. The cycle continues. I will be going back.

On the way up, I passed a bridge with a plaque crediting a Boy Scout troop from 1991. Hauling those beams a mile up a mountain is no small thing, and the bridge is still standing. That kind of legacy sits well. I really liked the photo from the bridge and painted it a few weeks later.

The hike gave me good thinking time. I’ve been sitting with some complicated feelings about a program I lead at work — growing pains that have felt personal in ways that are hard to separate from professional. And I’ve been slowly working through Say What You Mean, a book on mindful communication rooted in nonviolent communication principles. Something about being out in the cold, moving at a steady pace, let some of that settle. The book’s central idea keeps landing for me: so much of life runs on autopilot, and autopilot is a reliable way to not get your needs met, because you’re not even consciously aware of what they are.

Good hike. Good dog. Go find the beavers.