One Legged Mule-Skinner of Samuels Lake

Terry Barker fishing from his mule Rosie

At 69 years old, he sat straight in the saddle.  Samuels Lake stopped abruptly at the edge of a bally peak and Terry was filling his pouch with fish about as fast as he could reel them into shore.  Rosie, his mule stood patiently on the last piece of meadow before it became part of the boulder strewn slope above.  It sort of catches the eye to see a man fishing from a sharply dressed, zebra-dun mule in such a beautiful place.  Even more impressive, the mule continues to ignore the sweet grass at her feet while her rider engages in one of mans' most ancient sports from her back.  Then it strikes you.  The man on the mule is missing his right leg.  And suddenly... you know all you need to know about the character of the One-legged Mule Skinner of Samuels Lake.

It was Uintas 2012.  After spending some annual wilderness weeks in the Windrivers, we decided we missed the Uintas--especially the basins between King's Peak and Fox Pass.  When you see the photos that finish this story, you'll know why.

Our last trip to the Uintas was interrupted by high traffic around our campsite near Fox Lake.  Several large groups of hikers came right after us--one of which, a Boy Scout troop from the city, so exhausted from their hike, couldn't bring themselves to go another step when they discovered that we were in their hoped-for campsite.  So they dropped their camp right next to us--in our only prime, night-time grazing area.  With all the riding we were doing, we needed that feed to keep our mules in good shape, and no amount of pleading with the leaders of that troop regarding the safety of the boys or our mules that they had chased out of that meadow so they could set tents would change their minds.  And pointing out the thousands of square miles of incredible country around them fell on deaf ears.  It made our last couple of days a little difficult.

I knew my wife wouldn't like the extra riding, but this time we were going to camp in one of the most remote, least known lakes in the basin.  Samuels Lake.  It is on the map, but there is no trail there, and you sort of have to know the way in to find it.  This year, we wouldn't have to compete for our privacy.

Trouble is... we weren't the only ones who made the same calculation.  Great minds think alike.

Sometime midway through the week, a train of 7 mules arrived at Samuels Lake late in the evening.  The light had dimmed and we could barely see them passing through the forest outside our camp.  They were coming for the meadow at the foot of the lake near where we were camped.  Saddle sore.  Ready to be done.  And now, frustrated at having their usual campspot occupied.  They wondered if they could stand pressing on to a lake in the Davis chain.  Instead, the mule train stopped and dropped camp in a meadow on the other side of the low, tree lined ridge that separated the meadow where we were tented from them.  Our naturally curious mules, hobbled for the evening feeding, immediately headed over to pay them a visit.  What could be better than fresh company for a mule?

Things were slightly tense for a moment as we sorted mules.  They were local and tired.  Though unsaid, and probably unthought by them, we knew that we were invading years of family tradition.

After a day or two of exchanging pleasantries and finding some reason for real friendship, we found ourselves fascinated by the one-legged patriarch of the Barker family who was fishing along the shore of the lake.  "Mind if I shoot a few photos of you Terry?" I asked as we rode up.

"Take all you want!  Say... where are you folks headed today?  I'm bored."  Came the reply.

The next hours were spent sharing a lifetime of memories and lore.  He was tickled to see our two youngest boys (Brother Mike and I) riding mules with skill.  And we were tickled to watch a man who would not be denied after living ten years without his right leg, ride a mule through some country that would make some two-legged men on better mules a bit nervous.  "See that patch of trees over there?" he pointed.  "I hid right over there with my mule tied and called that bull elk with a cow call."  Turning and looking over the saddle we had just traversed, he continued, "He came right through that saddle and stood next to this little lake where I dropped him with my aught-six."

After spending more time with Terry, his son Clark, and his grandson Preston, it became clear that the Earth had not lost her salt.  We enjoyed the felicitous neighborliness they exhibited.  And we learned from their lifetime of mule packing experience.

Thank you fine friends, for adding life's salt to our week in the Uintas! It was so much more savory than if we had stayed in that sacred place alone.  I sincerely hope I get to ride again with the One-legged Mule Skinner of Samuels Lake.

Pommel to housing behind the cantle--seat belted in for balance.

Fox Pass looking back to Queant

Cousins--joined at the hip

Riding partner--loves to explore

Don't often get the woman's touch in the wilderness :)

Frustration Peak...looking down on NoName, Dime and Fox lakes

Carving steak with a fine, treasured Phuuko knife

The view from the top is...well... I'd love to have a cabin down in that valley for the rest of time.  (Looking North into Wyoming.)

Spring Water from 12,000 feet

...and a splash of fuchsia at 12,000 feet

 Old plane wreck?  Maybe?

Brother Mike.  Making family time is worth more than gold.

Lake to Fork: Turf n Surf, Vitamin B, and Kodiak Berry Cake

There are a lot of ways to eat in the wilderness.  If you are skilled enough, you can hunt-gather your meals.  Most find it easiest to carry freeze dried food on their backs.  But when you travel the back country on mules, the sky is the limit, and this trip had a 23rd anniversary built into the middle of it, so we ate very little freeze dried vittles in the Uintas this year.  The morning of our anniversary looked like the lead photo.

The Kodiak Berrycake seen above is a simple favorite when we take the dutch oven anywhere:

• 1 Box Kodiak Pancake mix (no other wimpy pancake mix measures up in the opinion of everyone who tastes this rich product.  This is an unsolicited, unpaid endorsement.)
• Just enough water.  Don't mix it too thin or over beat the batter for best leavening.
• Fresh berries laid right on top of the rising mix (blue berries, raspberries, black berries, etc)
• Bake until finished.  
• Slather it in real butter and stingily drizzle real maple syrup over it to bring out the hearty flavors of the berries and cake.

Vitamin B

Harvest the Surf

What you find at 11,000 feet in the icy lakes of the mighty Uintas

Lake to Fork in about 20 minutes.

Sweet Vidalia Onions with taters over a bed of hamburger

Wood fired rib steaks on day five.  They left 107 miserable St George degrees under a thin block of dry ice in a coleman cooler, and stayed frozen until we could wait no longer to eat them.

Kodiak Cakes made my 23 year bride blush ;)

The Character of an Ass

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

Donkey Wars on Facebook

Ass jokes.  It never ends.  Brother Mike lives on the acre adjacent to ours.  His jack Donkey Otey is an escape artist, and about once in every while, he gets out.  Studs being what they are, they will fight to the death if they could.  Usually they fight all night long, and we wake up to two exhausted jacks who still want to kill each other.  Rusty normally gets the worst of it.

Facebook got a whiff of the battle today.  Thought I'd share.  That'd be the missus trying to referee the Donkey wars on Facebook.  Keeping it family friendly one ass joke at a time.

Battle hardened warrior 

Blood, sweat, and flung-dung are a sure sign of a heated battle

Donkey Otey, separated from Rusty and still full of piss and vinegar!

You're nothin' but a "it"

Happy Independence day!

This mule tune is gonna be stuck in my head all day.  Thanks a lot Festus... No wonder he named his John mule "Ruth."

"You get no love cause you're nothin' but a it"
 
"I plumb forgive her because he's nothin' but a it"

And this, ode to the mule, in melodic patriotism.

Trainwreck

Man enough to lead a green pack mule.  Boy enough to tie a random stick behind his saddle.

She stopped and leaned back on the rope instead of hopping over the log behind Preston's young mule, Senator.  She is quite young herself.  At two years old, Midnight Storm is a bit mustangy.   Her mother is a Sulpher herd mustang with a little bit of a mean streak and an unforgiving buck.  Midnight inherited an uncanny wariness and an extra dose of fight or flight to compliment her mulish intelligence.  And she has never forgiven me for roaching her mane against her will when she was a baby .  

Preston had done a magnificent job leading Midnight from Mill Flat to North Valley, and she had complied with her pack job sans complaint until she stopped at that log on the edge of the meadow.  We were just a few hundred yards from camp.  This was her second pack trip, the first being a year ago--just a few light things to try and give her some experience.  When we left the trail head the day before, Preston led a two-up train consisting of Calamity Jane and Minnie Pearl, tied nose to tail.  But the first time leading two-up made him slightly nervous and he requested to lead the very green Midnight for the rest of the trip.  We didn't dare tie her to anybody or anything.

After a couple of futile tries to get Midnight over the log, she laid down to roll.  She carried a lot of supplies, canvas, sawbuck, and rope on her topside.  After a while, the urge to scratch the itch under the pack blanket must have been unbearable.  Getting all that gear on Midnight in the first place was its own rodeo.  Every item was suspect.   Like a sweaty piece of dynamite that could explode at the slightest provocation, she inspected each piece of gear with muscles taught.  So we loaded her with care, hoping to avoid an accidental discharge.  Once the load was set, the danger passed, and she was happy to follow along as part of the mule train.

She stood back up, still on the wrong side of the log, and at Preston's urging, Midnight finally made the jump.  Her well balanced load had shifted to the right after laying down, and slipped even more when she landed on the other side.  But sweaty dynamite is never safe.  With all the percussion and earth-shattering shock of a stick of TNT, Midnight blew up.  She didn't finish blowing up until the only thing left was the sawbuck hanging from her belly.  Epic train-wreck! 

After the dust settled I tied Midnight to a stout tree, and one of the nearby Boy Scouts that we were packing into Scout Camp helped me resaddle and repack the load.   Preston ran after my mule train that had decided to trot on ahead.  Gear was scattered all over the meadow.  The manty that held the load was shredded.   But we gathered it up and repacked the very skittish young mule--we didn't have far to go.  By the time it was over, we had experienced other train-wrecks on the trip, but this blowup was the biggest in terms of affect.  Preston finally returned with my three mules after catching up to them half a mile away.  It was then that I noticed that something was different with my 9 year old boy.  After all the trauma that usually goes with run-away mules and violent mule tantrums, Preston just smiled, retook Midnight's cotton rope and finished leading our train to camp.   "Dad?" he said.  "Should we give Midnight a new nickname?" He was referring to Leon's pet name for one of Brother Mike's horses, dubbed affectionately Superglue.  "Sure Bud.  How about 'Trainwreck'?"  

It is the stuff of nicknames, and boys, growing up.

Leading out with a two-up, nose-to-tail train.

Leon in man-pain after his packhorse rears back into Kevin's truck and caves the rear panel...kneeing him in the groin in the process.

Preston leans down to pick up her lead, just moments before the train wreck 

Headed back off the mountain with a different load--this time?  No wrecks.

Valleys High... Boys to Men

Unscripted Moments...boys chasing outlaws

Pine Valley Mountain hides her glory from all but the most ambitious travelers.  Nested in heavily guarded, densely timbered peaks atop the world's largest laccolith, several lush valleys offer a taste of summer paradise that can only be experienced in a few places.   These valleys carry simple names: South Valley, Whipple, North Valley, West Valley, and Katy Lane.  There are others, but these valleys lie in the heart of the heights--and getting there requires significant effort.  The trails are steep, rocky, and often covered in downed timber.  The reward for breaking out into Pine Valley Mountain's valleys is pure mountain air. Thin, laced with sweet pine and salty marsh, breathing it is sheer joy.

Leon and I don't need much excuse to get out of the 105 degree heat that is here already.  We have a scout camp coming up that needs to be scouted out so that we can be prepared for 25 or so teenaged boys who lack experience, but want a high adventure trip in a couple of weeks with pack stock on Pine Valley Mountain.  So, we took our own little guys up for Father's Day weekend.  High adventure with young boys still brimming with imagination and toothless grins reminds me of why I love the title 'Father' more than any of the other titles that I claim.   Observing the movement and bearing of small boys is a taste of Gilead's Balm:

Little boys ride horses and mules like men, with fierce determination... while they laugh and whack at the old names carved in the stands of quaking aspens with some stick they picked up on the trail.


Little boys camp and cook like men, with dirty-faced pleasure... while they chase each other over rock and log with toy guns that they created by the sheer force of imagination from punkwood lying around our heavy canvas tent.


Little boys lead and pack stock like men, with John Wayne's true grit... while they hold the lead rope from a pack mule in their teeth and squeeze aside hidden, dusty tears as they use both hands to remount a dancing saddle mule that wants to go.

Fatherhood hides His glory from all but the most ambitious travelers.  Secretly nested in a culture that entices men with fortune, fame and vice, while providing a cacophony of sensory numbing entertainment for little boys, lies the Valley of Fatherhood.  Climbing the barriers to good fatherhood requires significant effort.  Today's rocky trails soften our boys and forge compliant men with effeminate temperament, who fear rugged individualism.  Life's downed timber enforces group-think and squashes critical thought.  Like the short summer season at altitude, the opportunity to BE father is fleeting.  Fatherhood.  It is far too short.  And the moment where a boy can learn to be a man, from his father must be seized without delay.  But the reward for breaking out into the Valley of Fatherhood is sweet fraternal affection and salty masculine jocularity--and breathing it is sheer JOY!

Kolob formations to the East

Always time for a little trick riding

...and always a stick to whack whatever needs whacking

That sweet mountain music

Feeling Mutual on a Sunday Night

Evening has rolled in with all of its contentment and restful Sunday bliss.  Improving upon this silence takes effort.  After being prodded by an occasional reader, I just wanted to say that I am not as absent as my blog appears.  Part of my problem is that if I can't say it better than I did the first time... I'm OK saying nothing at all.

BUT, I do have tales in the hopper and trips planned which brim with promise.  As soon as I get some closure, I will have volumes to say about a scrape with Wyoming's own Wyatt Earp after being accomplice to a horse rescue on our last Windrivers pack trip.  I find good story in the experience with political implications about how the mis-application of law contributes to bad citizenship.  I'm pretty sure I'll be naming names...

My tolerant wife is committed to joining me and a couple of the kids for our annual pack trip in July--this time in the Uinta Wilderness.  I've spent enough tourist money in Wyoming for a while--both voluntarily and involuntarily.  Plus, I miss the  rich meadows at the foot of those bally peaks.  So, Longears and Sourdough lives, quietly, contentedly, on a Sunday night.

Man's relationship to the horse...

Nichole Cliffe over at the Hairpin explains the horse.  She knows what she is talking about.  Relevant excerpts below:

"If you haven't spent a lot of time around horses, you may have the idea that they are like dogs and cats (really big, dangerous dogs and cats). This is untrue. YOU are like dogs and cats, in that you are a predator. Let's not get sucked into the canines/intestines/primates-eating-fruit aspect of our disputed status as omnivores. The fact is, if someone says to you "hey, let's try this new brunch place that has amazing cocktails," there's a decent chance you'll say "great, meet you there." Your dog feels similarly. New things are fun! That is because you are a predator.

"Prey animals do not think new things are fun. New things, if you are a prey animal, usually mean a swift death. Horses are like deer. They see something unexpected, they freeze for a second, and then they book it on out of there. They don't like to leave the herd. They have no interest in breakfast cocktails. If you try to take your horse to a new brunch place, you need to convince them that a) you've been there before, b) there are no cave trolls at the brunch place, c) there will be other horses at the brunch place, and d) you will be a royal pain in their ass until they quit dicking around and agree to go to the brunch place.

"What happens, though, when you fall in love with an ill-advised horse, is you become kind of a wonderful bitch, in a good way. You have to be braver than you really are, or you'll get hurt. You have to fake it. You have to convince this beautiful, dumb, flighty creature that you are a strong and bossy person who knows what's best. You need to pretend you're a horse, as a rider, in a way you never really have to empathize with your dog or cat. "Oh, there's a plastic bag drifting across the arena. That's terrifying." "That other mare is in heat, and if I get too close to her, she's going to kick me in the face." "Everyone's getting fed right now, so we kind of want to duck out at the gate."

"Horses are sublime. They're gorgeous mythical beasts that emerge from antiquity to destroy your bank account and break your collarbone. They're fragile. They're dangerous. They need new shoes every six to eight weeks. They eat your heart. They fall in love with your vet, and deliberately colic themselves in order to spend more time with him.

"You are not vitally important to your horse, not really, not like you are to your dog, ever. They never figure out who you are, and why you do the silly things you do. You have to forge a relationship with your horse while knowing that, given the chance, they'd probably rather hang out with their buddies than spend time with you. But then, one day you pull up to the barn, and you realize that your horse has memorized the sound of your car, as opposed to other people's cars, and has wandered over to the gate to greet you.

"It makes you feel lucky. Not just "oh, God, I can afford to do this idiotic sport" lucky, which you should feel every day, but some kind of stupid semi-spiritual lucky, because you've managed to connect with an animal ten times your size, and convinced them to ignore every instinct they possess in order to let you clamber onto their back and stick a metal bar in their mouth. It's crazy. It doesn't make any sense.

"You're a horse-person now. Maybe it'll pay off when the zombies come, and the gas pumps stop working."

Mustang Steel

Mother Nature's crucible is a refiners fire.  Life's overwhelming desire to be has gifted the wild horse with incredibly perfect feet.  Horse meat is high on the carnivores' totem pole of meal choices, and a horse without sound feet is an easy meal.  So, the genetics for lousy feet were weeded from the Mustang herds long ago.

I was reminded of this fact today while out trimming Kate's feet.  Kissin' Kate Barlow, our Sulphur herd Mustang has the most beautiful feet of any equine that I have ever examined.  And they are hard as steel.   It takes all my strength to cut through them with my long handled nippers, and the sharp teeth on my file feel like they are grabbing sheer substance as they bite the dense keratin of Kate's hooves.

But Nature didn't just give her a set of Mustang Steels to protect her life.  Nature gave her works of art.   Them's some beauts!

Fasten Your Seat Belts

Cameras don't often tell the full story.  My little iPhone sort of blunted the difficulty of what you are about to see.  I have been up this little draw a couple of times in the past, and my seasoned companions always shake their heads in dis-belief.  Even Jim who routinely takes us into technical territory won't try this steep draw himself.

This ride yesterday was extra good, because Preston and our foreign exchange student Yuya, who had never seen an equine before and is only on his third ride here, follow me up.  Of course, the mules make it look a bit easier than it is... but if you'll watch the dogs, especially the brown one that comes last, they will tell the story that the iPhone will not.