I haven’t published a Homefront Report this week. I kept thinking I would catch up tomorrow, and then tomorrow arrived with another migraine, another problem that needed solving, and a list of things I somehow worked on all day without getting any of them completely done. It’s been a hard week, and I know I’m not the only one who reaches Sunday hoping it might offer a place to set everything down and begin again.
There have been good things here, too. The kids came home from Halloween with bags so full of candy that I’m fairly certain we could survive a brief disruption to the grocery supply chain. They had a wonderful time, and when Monday brought school back around, everyone made the transition remarkably well.
Our oldest has recently begun experimenting with getting a ride to school instead of taking his scooter. For two full months, he reliably remembered his helmet, his gloves, and how to charge the thing. Now one of these essentials mysteriously goes missing about twenty minutes before I need to leave with his sister, who is usually still in some stage of getting ready. I tell him I can take him, but he’ll be late because I hadn’t planned to drive him. A few times his dad has been able to save the morning. I can’t prove there is a strategy at work here, but the timing is suspicious, and the investigation remains open.
I’m seeing more of my daughter again, too. She spent much of the summer unusually tired, with little interest in being her dad’s helper out in the yard. That was so unlike her that I worried something was wrong. Blood work confirmed she was anemic, and since she started taking iron, I’ve begun to see her energy return. I hadn’t realized how much I missed that part of her until it began coming back.
Ezra, meanwhile, has discovered that he can remove his own diaper. He knows a bath requires nakedness, so he takes off the diaper, runs around the house until I spot him, and then heads straight for the bathroom door to make his request. It is an effective system, and most of the time I oblige.
My husband is nearly finished with the exterior trim, although the rain keeps interrupting his plans. I really do need to get that man a workshop. We have almost all our plants in the ground, and yesterday we cleared the brush to make a home for the coast redwood I finally convinced him we needed. My part of the bargain was helping clear the space, which seemed fair given that I was the person proposing we plant a tree that may someday tower over everything around it.
The tomatoes are still producing like crazy, the onions are nearly ready, and the caterpillars have arrived. That means the children have resumed their tradition of building a little house with leaves and grasses for any caterpillars they find. They make sure the caterpillars can leave whenever they want. One year, quite a few stayed for weeks anyway, and the children have been devoted caterpillar landlords ever since.
It was while thinking about those little houses, and the larger home we’re trying to make on this patch of land, that I saw photographs of another family arriving somewhere new.
On November 4, people carried crates down to a small loch in the Scottish Highlands. Inside was a family of six beavers, including young kits. Five hundred years have passed since beavers were last recorded beside Loch Ness. Humans hunted them until they disappeared from Scotland, and the water kept moving through a landscape that no longer had them in it.
In the photographs from the release, one of the younger beavers swims through the reeds. Another sits near the water grooming its belly. The adult female was the last to leave her crate. I keep returning to that detail, because for a moment the enormous story of a species returning after five centuries becomes wonderfully small. There is a mother taking her time. There are young ones discovering what’s around them. Someone has brought them to a place where they can stay together, and now the people standing nearby are waiting for her to come out when she is ready.
Those people couldn’t simply wish the beavers back. Trees for Life and Beaver Trust had to find a place with the right habitat, work with residents and land managers, arrange care for the animals, and make plans for the difficulties that might come. There were people with concerns about what beavers might do to farmland and waterways. The project listened, and the work of helping people and beavers live alongside one another will continue after the crates have been carried away.
That is part of the hope I want to hold onto. The people who brought this family back knew that opening the crates would be the beginning of a longer obligation. They did it anyway.
The beavers may now begin doing what beavers do. They will move branches, dig channels, and perhaps build dams that slow water and create wetlands. Frogs, dragonflies, birds, and other creatures may find shelter and food in the places they change. We can’t know yet exactly what this family will make of its new home. For now, the young ones have reached the reeds, and their mother has come out of the crate.
I think about all the hands involved in getting them there. The hands that cared for the animals before the journey, the ones that carried the crates, and the ones that opened them at the water’s edge. I think about people who lived here centuries ago and could have known beavers as part of an ordinary day, then about all the generations who never had that chance. We can give a different future to the creatures alive now and to the children who will grow up beside these waters.
That is what feels so powerful to me. We are the species that made the beavers disappear from this place. We are also the species that noticed their absence, listened to one another, and carried a family home. Our capacity to cause harm is real, and so is our capacity to take responsibility for it. Somewhere in the Highlands, that responsibility has muddy banks, reeds, six living bodies, and people committed to seeing what they need next.
I want my children to know that hope can look like this. It can begin with noticing that a small creature needs leaves and a way out of its little house. It can look like clearing brush because a tree deserves room to grow. And sometimes it takes years of conversations and careful planning before a mother beaver can leave a crate beside a loch her ancestors once knew.
This week, I wanted the relief of finishing something. Instead, I’ve been reminded of all the good that happens because people stay with work that isn’t finished yet. My daughter’s strength is returning little by little. Our redwood has a place waiting for it. The children will keep checking on their caterpillars. Across the ocean, a family of beavers has entered the water, and the people who brought them there will keep paying attention.
I hope tomorrow is gentler. I hope we get some rest, some rain that waits until the trim is done, and a fresh start. Most of all, I hope we remember what human beings are capable of when we look at a living thing that needs a home and decide to help it find one.
If this story gave you a little hope, please consider restacking it so someone else can find it, too. And if you’d like to chip in on our family’s projects, plants, and everyday adventures, you can leave a little extra love here.
We’re grateful to have you along for all of it.
Beautiful story. Thank you for this. We all need to be reminded that families of all sorts need looking after to thrive.
Lovely column.