66 WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



In places it goes over a waterfall. This may 

 break its hold upon its grain of sand. But 

 there are millions of grains in the water and if it 

 does not see the right one it seizes another and 

 downstream it goes, headed for the sea. I do not 

 know how long it takes to travel a thousand miles 

 along a big river, or how long from the source of 

 the Mississippi to the sea, a few years probably. 



But many grains of sand may be rushed along 

 faster than others. Many lodge upon a sand 

 bar where, like a stranded boat, they may wait 

 for weeks for a high water. They may wash 

 upon the bank during a flood and there remain 

 high and dry for years. But sometime they will 

 reach the sea. 



This water-washed sediment fills thousands of 

 beaver ponds. The beavers dredge quantities 

 of it out and throw it over the dam; they raise 

 the dam higher so as to keep water above the 

 sediment, but the sediment finally wins and fills 

 the pond. It may take five years or fifty. 



Grass and willows grow in the mud as soon as 

 sediment forces all the water out of the pond. 

 Many times I have examined the earth in my I 

 camp by a stream. Often there were spruces or | 

 pines more than two hundred years of age grow- 

 ing in this earth. Digging into it I have many 

 times found it to be a filled-in beaver pond. So 

 here in the grass and willows among the trees, 



