One year of animals crossing a beaver dam in northern Minnesota

2020 has been rough, so here’s a compilation of one year’s worth of wildlife that crossed a beaver dam just south of Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota.

This video was literally a year in the making! Beaver dams can be wildlife highways in boreal environments like the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem, allowing all sorts of wildlife to easily cross wetland habitats which might be otherwise difficult to get across.

While the wildlife is undoubtedly neat, we particularly enjoyed watching the changing of the seasons on this beaver dam! It summarizes life in the Northwoods: cold snowy winters and hot, humid summers with lots of vegetation!

This is such a relaxing watch that I can’t help but wonder how quickly all these animals’ lives would turn to shit if you introduced them to smartphones and social media. How long before we could get them to stop leisurely going about their day and instead get them to obsessively check their status updates and likes? Which is just a roundabout way of saying I’m jealous and I should throw my phone in a river.

Keep going for the full 6 minutes of peacefulness.