Using Llamas to Improve Your View
PUBLISHED IN THE SPRING 2019 ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF RMLA
I grew up on a little llama ranch two miles outside of Carbondale, Colorado. The house my parents built framed the town’s iconic Mount Sopris perfectly in the three huge picture windows of our living room, and our couch faced these windows so we always had front-row seats to the weather passing across the peaks. For my family, it has always been about the view.
When I was four and my brother was one, my folks mortgaged our house and bought two llamas after my dad read a Sports Illustrated article about people using llamas as pack animals. The llamas were a breeding pair, and my dad intended to build a pack string to help get his young family deep into the mountains he had been raised to love. This led to the invention of a llama pack saddle and a line of llama pack equipment called, naturally, Mt. Sopris Llamas (now Sopris Unlimited). Over the course of three decades, my dad trained generations of llamas to pack and traveled the country teaching people how to use pack llamas to improve their view. We still sell the equipment to packers around the world.
As kids, my brother and I were out on the trail before we could walk. Once the llamas came along, we spent every summer deep in the backcountry, exploring the western slope’s most secluded spots, a string of pack llamas in tow. Our family pack trips doubled as training sessions for green llamas that would, by September, be seasoned packers ready to sell. That meant that every obstacle along the trail, no matter how small, was both a potential lesson for the llama and a potential memorable moment for us. The stories of our trips can be found in my dad’s book, Tales of the Trail: An Entertaining and Educational Guide to Using Llamas in the Backcountry. It was during our summer pack trips that I learned to love nature in a way that is at the core of who I am as a person. And our little herd of pack llamas was a big part of that education.
We weren’t peak baggers or weekend warriors; our goal in heading to the backcountry was simply to be out in it, to enjoy the view. In camp each morning, my brother and I would wait for the sun to hit the tent before we would crawl out of our sleeping bags, as the nights in the semi-arid high mountains were usually cold and sometimes brought snow. After breakfast, my folks would drill us on the proper response to weather, wild animals, and getting lost and then they’d set us loose.
I remember sitting in the meadow where the llamas were picketed and watching them graze. As they made their way past me, cropping a clump of grass every few steps, they’d pause to sniff me and I‘d feel their warm grass-breath on the part of my hair. I remember making boats out of skunk cabbage leaves and racing them down a nearby stream. I remember the sunshine, the rain, the hail, the snow, the thunder, the lightning. I remember how beautiful it all was, especially if I were warm and dry at the time. I remember evenings spent cozied up around the campfire, slapping errant sparks off my pant legs and staring up at the stars until the combination of the fire’s heat on one side of my body and the cold of the night on the other finally sent me to the tent.
I want my kids, who are three and six right now, to have these memories, too. I want them to have a deep and intimate connection with nature, and I want pack llamas to be the means to that end. The problem is, my little family lives in town and we have no room or budget for our own pack string. Although there’s always a chance this could change, I’ve made peace with our lack of llama ownership. But this doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the dream of raising the next generation of llama wranglers.
In the last five years or so, packing with llamas has experienced a renaissance. I am constantly getting calls and emails asking if I know of anyone who has pack llamas for sale, and new commercial outfitting businesses are sprouting like mushrooms across the U.S. Leasing pack animals has become a rapidly-growing segment of the business, primarily because hunters have discovered how valuable pack llamas can be to a successful hunt. This renewed interest in packing with llamas means that it is possible—and actually, quite easy—for my family to go llama packing whenever we’d like.
My girls were out on the trail with llamas long before they could walk. As infants, they both spent hours in the laps of their grandparents, mesmerized by the sunlight sparkling on a turn in a stream. As toddlers, they fed handfuls of grass to llamas picketed out in a meadow and snuggled in their sleeping bags until the sun warmed the side of the tent. Two years ago, we went on our first pack trip with just the four of us, and my eldest led her first string up the trail. She’s a natural, already.
My girls are well on their way to loving wild places. I hope that this love settles into the core of the people they become and enriches their lives as it has mine, helping them understand the world, and their place in it, a little bit better.
