When four kids stuck in a van for hours get into an argument and the argument consists of  “those are beaver dams” and “no they aren’t”, a mom can get awfully tired - after an hour or two. This mom did.

We were camping at Green Lake which is a beautiful place that would never take you to the edge of sanity and yet, I felt my sanity slipping every so quietly over that edge.

There were piles of sticks in a field and those sticks appeared to be along the banks of a meandering stream - or was it a puddle? Regardless, there was the look of sticks and water and that alone was enough to trigger the fighting. Someone thought they might have seen a beaver. Some thought it was a farmer or maybe an old plow (it wasn’t moving). The arguments were lame and whiny and loud. At some point, my thoughts shifted from “BE QUIET” to “if they are going to argue, they might as well learn how to do it well”. Maybe they can all be lawyers one day - the kind who protect beaver or farmer habitat.

When we got back to our campsite, I suggested that everyone “stay apart” (this means a minimum of one arm’s length plus a foot) for about an hour while I re-grouped my headspace. In that hour, I decided that a formal debate on the  topic was a good way to manage the situation and learn some beneficial arguing skills. Teams were chosen. The judge (my husband) was put into place. We sealed the debate topic in an envelope with a wax seal (yes, I brought a wax seal camping). The teams were given their “position” on the beaver dams or piles of sticks. People complained that they had originally argued in the van for “piles of sticks” but now had to argue for “beaver dams”. I held my ground. You will take whichever side you are now on.

And so the debating began.

Passionate argument about the unnatural locations of the piles of sticks, the questionable state of the stream, the close proximity of one dam to the others, the distance of these dams from any other real water source. Counter-argument about the natural habitat of the beaver, the plausibility of beavers in the area, the evolution of beaver skills to form so many identical dams in a row and the lush and coveted coat of the beaver. And so it went. The Great Debate - Beaver Dams or Piles of Sticks. (I think piles of sticks, but I’m supposed to be neutral). There’s something to be said about arguing for a side you don’t believe in. It shifts something in you and turns your mind a bit. It helps you understand “the other guy” and clearly makes you think about how beavers live their lives. We didn’t drive past that area again and so, we will likely never know the truth about those piles. I’m not sure that it matters.

The next morning it started all over again. Someone told a story about a mountain lion. Someone else knows that it is called a cougar. “It is not”, “it is so”, “it is not”. Maybe we learned nothing. Where’s the wax seal?