There’s a place on the Park Loop Road at Acadia National Park where people often stop to look at Bear Brook Pond. When a tour bus stops it attracts attention and many cars stop too. People wonder, “What are they looking at?” It isn’t a bear.
Bear Brook Pond, nestled against the flank of Champlain Mountain, is also called Beaver Dam Pond for good reason. Near its far edge is a huge mound of sun-bleached sticks that’s an unusual sight for most of Acadia’s visitors. It’s even unusual to me.
In southwestern Pennsylvania we have beavers but we don’t have many ponds. Our beavers tend to make their homes in creek and river banks, usually around the roots of overhanging trees. One such place is at the big bend in Raccoon Creek at the Raccoon Creek Wildflower Reserve. Over the years the beavers have felled the trees on the floodplain and dragged them into a pile in the creek below an overhanging tree. It’s not a lodge in the classic sense but it serves their purpose.
Every time I visit the Wildflower Reserve I’m amazed at the changes to the beavers’ home. During floods the creek piles more debris against their structure or it sweeps part of their home away. This undoubtedly keeps them busy all the time but I never see them. They work at night.
Which brings me back to Acadia. Though beavers are nocturnal, there are always a few cars stopped at the pond and people standing by the road hoping to see them. I have never seen a beaver there — I always show up at the wrong time — but I stop too. Maybe some day I’ll see one as close as in this photo.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons of a beaver in Canada. Click the photo to see the original)