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The previous Kootenai Canvas, the Squirrel Cache Trail shelter at Farragut State Park, was correctly identified by Dave Lewis of Hayden. Here is his winning essay:

Romance was in the air the first time I saw the shelter at Squirrel Cache trailhead in Farragut State Park. At least that’s what I hoped as my wife observed that the place would be a good place to snuggle. “Not now!” she said reading my mind, “Maybe after our walk.”

“This is good,” I thought as we started down the trail.

Farragut State Park has a wonderful trail system with some shorter trails, such as Squirrel Cache, and some longer, like the one we started down with barely a second thought at the first fork we encountered. The short route back to our romantic shelter at the trailhead was soon behind us as we hiked toward Buttonhook Group Camp and on to some magnificent views of Lake Pend Oreille. The woods are lovely, dark and deep at Farragut State Park and as far as Robert Frost and I were concerned, my wife had a promise to keep, so I didn’t notice that both she and I were soon getting tired.

It wasn’t until we came to a strange rotating gate in high chain-link fence that I began to worry that we had walked too far. The fence is just like one the U. S. Navy might erect if it were to build a training station beside Lake Pend Oreille in 1942, and I figured that going through the gate meant leaving the park. I knew from driving from the park’s edge to the trailhead that we were miles away from our truck. This information did not put my wife in a snuggling mood.

We were walking side by side on South Road soon enough, but it seemed to me that my wife was getting farther and farther away from me with each step. Next time I’ll take the short trail.