Books & Boots at the North Swamp Trail: Beaverland

Date: 09/15/2023
Time: 6:30 pm-7:30 pm

Please join us for our next Books & Boots hike on Friday, September 15, at 6:30 pm. We’ll be hiking on the North Swamp Trail under the leadership of Hartley Mead, and looking for beaver activity. The book up for discussion is Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip. It is not necessary to have read the book first. All hiking abilities welcome. In the event of rain, we will meet the following Friday, September 22. This Norfolk Library program is in partnership with the Norfolk Land Trust and the Norfolk Church of Christ Green Team.

Park and meet at the tennis courts at Botelle Elementary School at 128 Greenwoods Road in Norfolk. Bina Thomson from the Norfolk Library and Hartley Mead from the Norfolk Land Trust will be waiting to greet people. Please note that the previous location of the hike was the Billings-Tait section trail, but has been changed to the North Swamp Trail. 

Please register below.

Beaverland is available at 23 libraries throughout Connecticut. If our copy is checked out and you would like to request a copy through inter-library loan, please contact Norfolk Library’s Front Desk Circulation at 860-542-5075, ext. 2.

More about the book:

Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer”.

What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, Beaverland reveals the profound ways in which one odd creature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.

 

Registration: