Beaver lodge on the Connecticut River
— — a small dome of sticks holding the dusk.
Not only on a wall.
“The Connecticut River runs about 410 miles south from the Quebec line, and most of its slow bends carry at least one beaver lodge. A dome of peeled sticks, mud-packed for winter, set against the cattails. The lodge is best read at dusk, when the wake of the returning beaver crosses the still water. Hairy ash, silver maple, river birch on the bank. The river makes the border with New Hampshire.
Beaver lodge on the Connecticut River, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Connecticut River forms the entire eastern border of Vermont, about 270 miles from the Canadian line at Beecher Falls south to the Massachusetts state line. Castor canadensis, the North American beaver, builds dome-shaped lodges of peeled sticks and mud in the slower oxbows and side channels along the river's length. A lodge typically rises two to four feet above the waterline and is anchored by underwater entrances below the frost line. The Connecticut River Conservancy notes active beaver colonies along most quiet tributaries from the Nulhegan Basin south through the Upper Valley.
The upper river runs cold and slow through the Northeast Kingdom, gathering tributaries: the Nulhegan, the Passumpsic, the Wells, the Ompompanoosuc. Beaver lodges sit where the current slackens enough to hold a winter food cache, a raft of fresh cuttings sunk near the entrance and accessible under the ice. The dome itself is hollow inside, with one or two plunge holes leading down to the underwater doors. Otter, mink, and great blue heron share the slack water. The upper sections run ice-locked from mid-December to late March.
A working lodge is quietest at midday and most alive at dawn and dusk. The first sign is a V-shaped wake, then the slap of a tail when the beaver sees a watcher and goes under. Fresh, pale, peeled sticks added recently mean the colony is laying in winter food. Old grey lodges with grass on the dome are abandoned. The river makes very little noise here; it moves but does not run. Cattails and arrowhead grow in the slack, and a single bird call carries across the pool.