One evening, a father and son were walking together by a river that ran through a forest

As they walked along the riverbank, they searched the ground around their feet for large, flat stones. When they found one, they would take turns making it skip along the surface of the water.

The father, who had a powerful wrist, could make the stone skip dozens of times before it sank into the water. The son, whose hand was much smaller and who was still learning to spin the stone properly, could only manage one or two skips. The son watched in awe as his father skipped the stones so beautifully, and looked for as many stones as he could find, so he could wlak.

As it got dark, and they were turning to head back, they spotted a pair of beavers, one much smaller than the other, building a dam near one of the river's tributaries. The smaller beaver struggled to lift anything besides small branches, but could stack them around the edges of the dam where they were supported by the larger pieces.

The next day, the son went to the same river by himself. As he walked home, he searched the ground for stones. But all the flat stones had been picked up and thrown away. He walked for a while in silence, until he came upon the spot where the dam had been. But looking, he saw that the dam had collapsed, and the two beavers were no where to be found.

Many years later, when the father had passed away, the son came back to the same river. The path of the water had shifted, and new trees grew in the place where he had once walked, with new tributaries flowing into the river.

As he watched the river flow by, he picked up a stone from the ground and skipped it across the water. He remembered walking with his father.