Aki and I pass some new fallen alders along the glacial moraine trail. Large wood chips, marked by beaver teeth, surround the resulting tree stubs. We never heard or seen a beaver drop a tree until today.

The snow is gone but a strip of smooth ice covers the trail. I slide down it while Aki checks the peemail. She sniffs something on one of the beaver dams near Norton Lake and then starts a wide sweep of the area. When a tree crashes onto the frozen lake, the little dog flies across the ice to investigate. I grow uncomfortable waiting for her to return, thinking about what a beaver’s teeth can do to a tree trunk. But Aki dashes onto the ice before I can head over to the beaver’s logging site.

An hour later, while we circled one last lake in the troll woods and hear another tree crash. Two years ago Aki broke through this lake’s ice when we heard several beaver tail slaps. I thought I had lost her that time. Today she runs to where the tree lays on the lake ice but is back before I can worry.