Llama needs hope to remain faithful

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

Today I was pretty convinced that Hope is just a city in Arkansas -- a sucker bet for people who can't see the reality in front of their noses.

I had seized onto hope on Friday, when our llama Constellatione had shown signs of improvement after 14 hours of not having the strength to stand up on his own. And the last place he had gone down was out in the pasture, in the wind.

Constellatione

Cobbling together a hay manger, a few hay bales, my compact tractor and a pontoon boat-sized tarp, I erected a quick wind break around him, but he had to walk on his own.

Our llama vet -- actually our llama vet's daughter -- discovered an infection caused by an abscess tooth. She was instructing her intern about how llamas can develop abscesses, "Like this one," she said, as she felt along the llama's jaw. She gave him a shot of antibiotic that she said could turn his situation around in 24 hours.

John speaks loudly with few words

By David Horst   sandhill7@gmail.com

How do I describe my friend John?

He is unlike anyone else I know — a mountain man born to the wrong time and place, but comfortable at any time and in any place.

John Behnke is, above all, nonjudgmental. That’s a quality I value in a friend.

We met through a mutual friend and a mutual interest in kayaking. We’ve done more than a dozen multi-day trips together, including at least 10 wilderness paddle-camping trips to the Apostle Islands. If you can come through that kind of potential for getting on each other’s nerves, you’ve got yourself a friend.

Navarino offers big trees for a pair of sawbucks

By David Horst sandhill7@gmail.com

NAVARINO -- For us, getting a Christmas tree is always an adventure.

Our tree is live. It’s cut by us. It is large.

We've had big fat trees, tall conical trees and bigger, fatter trees.

We’ll travel 20 miles for a tree. We have hiked every inch of an 80-acre tree farm and then walked away empty-handed when none of the trees met our -- well, really her -- standards.This year we went to the wild side. Unshorn trees in a former tree farm in the Navarino Wildlife Area were going for $20. Any size. Any species. Sales benefit the Navarino Nature Center.

Smaller turnout in the locks was OK

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

This was a far cry from 150 boats.

That's how many kayaks, canoes and stand-up boards we expected to show up at Lutz Park for the Appleton Locks Paddle.

That was before the one-week delay, due to hazardously high water flow on the Fox River, and the forecast for rain all day on our substitute date, Oct. 1.

The 38 boats that showed up didn't pack the locks full, as photos of past years' trips testify. No clanking of gunwales. No pushing of boats into the path of the lock gates.