Hi! I'm Grace Evans and you signed up for this weekly letter of reflections on canoeing.
I
Mid-June, local marsh. I was paddling with my brother when I saw my first mink. Rob spotted him, having grown acquainted with them before at his friend Emma’s cottage. Dark brown, almost a cross between squirrel and ferret, on the bank. We saw another one a few minutes later. I watched people walk the trails just a few feet away, completely unaware of the mink scampering along the bank below them. I thought about how many times I’d strolled along the edge of the marsh unknowingly beside the agile animal.
Later, on our way back to the boat launch Rob pointed. “Look, another one.”
I looked, but all I saw was a wide, flat silver fish, seemingly walking on the sandy strip along the bank.
“It’s a mink carrying a fish,” Rob said.
“Oh!”
“What did you think?” Rob said. “That we were seeing evolution happen?”
The mink-fish disappeared into the side of the bank.
We laughed. “This must be what Darwin saw!” Rob joked.
II
A few weeks later, I knowledgeably pointed out a mink running along the shore to my friend Emily.
“I see it,” she said, before we realized she was looking at a different mink running 30 feet away. The mink were running towards each other.
"They're going to have a meet cute," said Emily. I laughed. The distance between them shrank as they ran.
"Oh look, one just dropped his books," she said.
III
Late June, local marsh. On a hot sunny day, it was my ten-year-old friend Marie’s first time canoeing and she wasn't sold on it. She waited for me and my husband to put the canoe in the water at the dock, unhappily standing in a brand new lifejacket we'd purchased just for her.
Then: "Grace," she said. "I think I just saw a beaver." I was half paying attention to her as I tossed our paddles in the boat. Overstimulated and desperate for her to like the activity, my attention flickered all over the place.
"It was probably a squirrel." I demonstrated how to balance her weight as she lowered herself into the canoe.
Later, we were paddling across an inlet in the south part of the marsh when she pointed at the far shore where an adult and two small mink were scampering across the shore.
“There, that’s what I saw earlier,” Marie pointed. “See?”
Not a squirrel. She was absolutely delighted by my mistake.
IV
July, Lake Simcoe. I was staying at friends' island cottage skimming their archive of every print issue of Cottage Life. I came across an article about mink in a back issue and learned an amazing fact that I haven’t been able to substantiate since. CL online archives don’t go as far back as 2007 and the magazine hasn’t returned my email, so from memory, it was this: that a pregnant mink can become pregnant with a second litter, and then pause the first pregnancy so that she gives birth to all of her offspring at the same time.
I told my husband who is a bit of a know-it-all and he was unfazed.
When I told Emily during our next paddle, she was also amazed, and it was satisfying.
But is it true?
V
Late July, Grand River. I headed to the river for a paddle with my partner and father-in-law.
The water level was low, too low, and we needed to pay attention to rapids and rocks ahead so we could avoid crashing or acquiring additional scrapes across the bottom of the boat.
Up ahead I saw a low section, some rocks, but we had time, maybe 30, 45 seconds, and I pointed out a mink swimming across the river. We watched her progress, and were directly next to her when she dove into a hole at the water's edge.
I experienced a moment of wonder and connection as I thought about all the den entrances I'd paddled past the last few weeks, when Scott pointed out four baby mink on the opposite side of the river, energetically I might add, so my father-in-law and I swiveled our heads to the right to look and, you guessed it, that 30 seconds was up and – crunch.
“Guys,” Scott scolded us, the lookouts. Neither of us even glimpsed the four mink babies.
VI
September, Algonquin backcountry. Two mink playfighting flung themselves across my campsite, rolling over each other and exciting my Jack Russell terrier, Dash.
I regarded the scampering mink as I might a kind and attractive colleague, but one that shared a boring anecdote at a work party: with interest but no longer the naïve sense of discovery and enchantment of before.
The two mink chased each other off into the woods, and Dash laid down.
I love the design and illustration of this little nature guide. The handwriting on the title page shows that it was awarded as the second prize at camp to my husband’s uncle in 1973, before my husband inherited it.
Mink links~~
Mink [The Canadian Encyclopedia]
Mink and the Coronavirus: What We Know: "Mink are the only animal known to both catch the virus from people and transmit it to them." [NYT]
A booming niche industry goes bust, quietly taking millions in public money with it: "A CBC News analysis of bankruptcy and government records suggests that, since 2014, upwards of $100 million in provincial and federal money has been spent in Canada trying, often unsuccessfully, to keep individual mink farms afloat, or is tied up in loans by Crown agencies that will likely never be repaid." [CBC]
Is This the End of the Mink Coat? "And 2020 has brought a new set of challenges for the mink coat, both environmental and cultural." [NYT]
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