Finding Comfort in Camelids

It is probably safe to say that I was one of the few Americans who found solace after the 9/11 attacks by surrounding myself with camelids. I was living in Peru at the time and feeling very depressed and worried and far from family. I had heard there was a camelid fair that had just opened near Lima's seaside. Camelids, for those who are new to the term, are related to camels and, in the case of South America, include alpacas, llamas, vicunas, and guanacos (for a great example of what to do with an alpaca if you happen across one, visit http://northstaralpacas.etsy.com). I thought it would take my mind off the terrible tragedy America had just suffered, so I packed my camera gear in a fanny pack and went.....only to find that it didn't open until the afternoon, several hours off. Perhaps because I looked so woebegone, the guard took pity on me and let me in. Except for hundreds of wonderful camelid specimens, and a few herders and breeders, I had the place to myself.

There were llamas, with liquid eyes fringed by long eyelashes, long necks and erect ears, and their wonderful combination of immensely dignified bearing and silly expressions. I began to feel better, as it is impossible to remain sad around llamas. There were adorable alpacas as well, with their fluffy mantles and utterly cute faces, in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, all looking very huggable. There were a few vicuna, delicate wild creatures whose wool is said to be worth more by weight than gold, wool so soft and fine and tempting that they are perennially poached in the Peruvian altiplano, despite government efforts to protect them. And there were guanaco as well who, unlike their cousins, the alpaca and llama, were never tamed by the Inca or Spaniards.

After some time spent at this fair, I'm sure my expression gradually changed from sadness to amusement to bliss, which is a difficult feeling to avoid when surrounded by several hundred camelids. As I was nearing the end of the fairgrounds, I heard the sound of jingling and tinkling, and looked up to see some llamas dressed in their finest, rivalling their camel cousins in the Arabian deserts in festooned glory. Leading them was a llama herder, a man with a wild and distant look in his eyes, who was dressed from head to toe in clothes made of llama and alpaca wool, utterly oblivious of the hot sun heralding the beginnng of the Peruvian summer, or camera-toting foreigners. He had eyes only for his llamas. A breeder standing nearby told me that the llama herder had come down from the altiplano with his flock. I had travelled quite a bit through Peru's high mountains plateaus, and had noticed the occasional speckling of llama herds in the far off distance, surrounded by hundreds of miles of emptiness, where they would be herded into little corrals at night to protect them from attack by puma. Therefore, I understood, I thought, the look in this man's eyes. To spend one's life protecting these animals, sleeping with them for warmth, with little or no human contact for weeks, perhaps months, would be enough to drive anyone wild. And to think that, in the dead of night, with no sounds to break the immense stillness, the llamas would start to hum......for llamas do indeed hum.