#5 South of Vita, MB: My Darlin' Clementine

You know he's a good friend when you call him for the first time in a year and when you ask, "Can you make me an ox?" he doesn't laugh at you over the phone.  He doesn't even ask why in the world you might desire a beast of burden. Nika was quiet for a minute and then thoughtfully responded, "Well there's Clementine.  She's a heifer, bottle-fed from a baby, and good around people.  I bet she could learn to pull a cart."  

That was five years ago.  Patty and I had decided to go on a long distance Red River Cart journey from Winnipeg to St. Paul, MN.  Calling Nika was the very first step I took in getting the oxcart rolling.  My first financial investment was a bag of carrots that I offered to Clementine when the two of us were finally introduced.  It turned out that Clementine made the career choice of becoming a full-time mother.  I applauded her for it, but now I had to find another engine.  So I hired a steer named Zik from a farm closer to home to be the motive power for our international oxcart adventure.

Nika and Denise live on a farm right on the 49th parallel.  They are directly under the flightpath of the drones and helicopters that have lately been deployed to secure the border.  So when Zik, Patty and I were camped a mile from the US before the attempted crossing on the Red River Trail in 2022, our friends came and had a buffalo roast with us.  

Last Wednesday as we left Dominion City in our motorhome, Patty and I stopped for a bit of reminiscing at that last Canadian campsite of three years ago, before driving on to pop in on Nika and Denise.  We came unannounced but when you do that to good friends, they'll always have the iced tea ready.

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