Ride Heck out of Her

Colic. Its a small word that strikes big fear into the hearts of all equine owners. Its a broad term that means "stomach pain," and it is the leading natural killer of horses. The danger of colic goes to the stomach of the matter--Equines have a small stomach and nearly 85 feet of intestine. Designed for non-stop feeding as the horse moves about grazing, movement in the system is continuous and uni-directional (they can't throw up). Horses are big, one way, inefficient poop factories. When the factory gets plugged, it can be agonizing to the horse, and deadly. The upside of the system can bulge and burst, or the horse in pain can roll and get its guts twisted or kinked--all of which are a final death sentence without immediate surgery.

At 5:00 am Saturday morning, I opened the trailer at the Lee Pass trail head in Zion Nat'l Park to unload the mules and mustangs for a fall-colors trip into Bear Trap Canyon. Oddly, Mona Molly was laying on the floor in a different compartment than where I loaded her (Houdini couldn't have done it better.) She stood up and came out, but I noticed immediately that something was wrong. She had been fine at 3:45 am when I loaded her. Now she showed signs of obvious pain and wanted to lay down over and over again on the hard red pavement where we parked. I repeatedly got her back up, and tried to keep her moving, afraid for her life. After each few steps she would hunch up and collapse. At one point, she laid lifeless, limp and unresponsive, leading me to think I had just witnessed her expiration. Suddenly she was back on her feet. Mules can take a lot of pain, so it must be bad.

What a pickle! Its 5 a.m. and I'm a long way from anywhere. Loading Mona Molly back up for a trip back to town could be dangerous and I have no pain meds to settle her down. She's lucky she didn't hurt herself or the other animals while she thrashed about on the way to the trail head. A real long shot, but worth a try, I dialed my vet on the cell. He answered, (Sorry for the early wake up, Jace.) While we talked, Kimball Harmon and his wife JoAnna took turns walking her in the dark. After discussing my predicament and Molly's signs, he sighed, "Well, saddle her up and Ride Heck out of Her. If she keeps trying to buckle and fall down on the trail, then call me back."

Meteors streaked across the moonless morning sky, some disappearing behind Kolob's blackened fingers which cut a toothy smile in the starry canvas overhead. With some work, my son Tyler and I got everybody saddled up, and we descended into the mouth of the canyon. Molly moved with effort but didn't try to lay down--her gut gurgling loudly while the first traces of light sharpened Kolob's looming silhouette above our left shoulder. Gradually, black turned to fiery red as the sun cast its early light on the towering sandstone, and a cascade of fall colors emerged from night's firm grasp. Mona Molly lumbered along with increasing ease. Fall's morning chill smelled earthy and fresh, offering the promise of a brilliant day. By the time we had entered the narrowed bowels of Bear Trap Canyon, refrigerated beauty overwhelmed the senses and Molly was back to her old self.

The return trail was warm and we shed our layers against the full strength of a perpendicular sun. Fall's afternoon warmth smelled musky and rejuvinating, the promise of a brilliant day fulfilled. Molly's pace was the typical glad-to-be-headed-back sprint that I remember--she always knows when her compass points back to the trailer.

She carried me 20 magnificent miles that day. Ride Heck out of Her? indeed...

A Cowbell and Half a Moon

To Curb-and-Gutter bound souls, the moon is a curiosity of the night-time sky that affects mood and tide, but whose glow is swallowed up in a sea of city lights. Not so in those special places, where moon-shine still bathes the night's landscape with soft white light. The colors of day fade away, and the world becomes black and white like an old western movie, awash in shades of gray punctuated by the sharp black lines of moon-shadow.


This weekend was a three generation pack trip into Hop Valley. My brother and I took a couple of our boys and my aging father, who just returned from a 2 year absence as a missionary in Alaska, back into our favorite part of Zion National Park. It was many things: Dad hasn't been atop a horse for several decades. Besides a little practice over the past two weeks to get ready for this, two days on my big dunn Molly about wore him out. My five-year-old Preston enjoyed his first real solo trip. He didn't want to come home and would have preferred to stay until we starved him out. Brother Mike and I were breaking Sulpher herd mustangs, him on Allie, and me finishing a 30 day job for some friends on their 2 year old gelding, Rusty.




Before bed, I noticed Senator, the 6 month old mule we brought to tag along was gone. I recently weened him, and had left his momma home. All day he had been with his coral mates and I didn't sense much need to worry. SHOOT! Not again! When these babies want a drink of Milk, they don't care what stands in their way! Sure he was headed home, I saddled my Molly, and headed off into the dark, alone, to find him. Molly's cowbell still fastened to her neck, we climbed out of the canyon's sandy bottoms and up the rocky trail to the top of the Mesa. The moon was about half lit, boldy marking the trail. Cold, clear air filled my lungs and the clank of cowbell sounded in perfect rythm to Molly's stride. The brilliant red cliffs had lost their color, standing gray against the night sky. Senator was up top just where I thought he would be, on his way home to momma. All alone, he was glad to see me, but wasn't in the mood to follow me back. I haltered him and began the long descent back to camp, glad of heart that I didn't lose my little mule in this Lion infested wilderness, glad of ear for the sound of Cowbell, and glad of eye for the light of half a moon to get me down the trail.

Riding into the Hand of God--Hop Valley

The least known part of Zion National Park is the Kolob Canyon formations at the NorthWest corner of the park. Locally, it is known as the Kolob Fingers for its hand-like topography when seen from above. Flying over the Kolob Fingers is something of a religious experience. Pardon the hyperbole, but the view from above is the most beautiful piece of terra firma on this Earth. Six West-pointing fingers and the South-pointing thumb pictured above, dominate a bewildering tangle of slot, crack, and sheer cliff. I have flown into His grasp several times, the wind in my face, soaring with the raptors on the magic carpet of my Powered Parachute. The spectacle evokes involuntary tears every single time. Its natural beauty causes the soul to recoil, as if transfiguration would be required to withstand the view.

I first disovered Hop Valley on a flight over the fingers. A beautiful narrow valley, lush with grass, and a meandering stream that seemed to emerge from the ground on the south end of the valley and disappear into the ground at the foot of a small mountain on the other. The fingers tower at the north end of the valley, rising 2500 hundred feet above, and across a chasm another 1000 feet below, where Hop Valley's creek re-emerges and empties into LaVerkin Creek. It is a choice peice of real estate surrounded by official park, but still private property. Generations of the Lee family of Virgin Utah have run cows in her verdant meadows. We met Alan and some of the family there last fall while on horseback and helped him round up some strays that had wandered into the Park.

This weekend's weather threatened rain, so we looked forward to our planned overnighter into Hop Valley with great anticipation. Riding and camping in the rain is good practice for our summer wilderness trip, and we love it anyway. Defying nature under hat and slicker is good, raw fun. So, prepared for rain, my two daughters, friend Bruce Jenkins, and I decended into the Valley.

The twin smells of wet pine and spring sage blew coldly against our faces as we rode between the myst-shrouded canyon walls. Weather barking more than biting, we got a few sprinkles on the way in, and a gentle, dry rain that sounded like cannon-fire against our tent the next morning. It spat just enough to discolor the vertical sandstone cliffs and scrub the already-pristine air. At bedtime, the sky cleared and we hunted constellations to the sound of a lonely blues harp and the warmth of a fire.

Life's stream wandering through the straight and narrow, a gateway to the very Hand of God--riding Hop Valley is an allegorical journey, rich with metaphor and spiritual overtones. No wonder the ancients feared and revered this place. I often wonder if the general decline in religiosity can be traced to the loss of our night-time sky and our addiction to pavement. Only the most calloused soul could miss the still small voice, or the lions roar of His love in this place.

The Quickening of time

Life accelerated moves along at a pace that leaves you gasping for breath--its wind hitting you in the face so forcefully, breathing comes in gulps. Months, measured by mortgages and car payments blur by like the dotted center line on life's highway. Years, punctuated by tax season, click along like telephone poles beside that same highway--each one coming before you recover from the last one.

Is time really moving faster, or are we just so busy that it seems like it? In the tradition of the prophets who speak of the latter days, time is to be quickened. I don't know if such a thing is meant to be a physical reality or just a perception, but I found the secret key to slowing time down to a manageable pace.

Just have mule babies. Watching our overdue mare (9 going on 10 days overdue) is worse than watching the grass grow. Each night, we take turns checking on her hourly.

Remember how slow time seemed to move when we were kids? My kids didn't know what that meant until now. And the best part about time slowing down...? I have more of it to get things done than normal. Soon as the baby comes and we get back on the fast train again, we'll be behind as usual.

General Washington, what about those genes?

So what is in those genes? The history of the American Mammoth Donkey, now a rare breed, seems sketchy and difficult to discover in sound, peer-reviewed journals or articles. Perhaps there are some dusty books in a library somewhere that contain good information on Mammoth donkey history, but I'm not seeing it in cyberland. Currently, argument exists over whether today's American Mammoth Donkey is even a seperate breed. Perhaps all we have left is the dilute aftermath of Henry Ford's legless invention. For many years after mechanized transportation entered the scene, the Mammoth Jack seemed to disappear from radar and the American landscape.


Breed registries exist that help inform the renewed interest in Mammoth Donkeys, but they are relatively young, somewhat less rigorous than many horse registries, and, I wonder--relatively underutilized? The unique American need that drove the development of certain Mammoth characteristics prior to the industrial era has shifted to a newly unique American need--recreation. Finding the answer to the genenetics quest in the Jack world often requires following the oral traditions of breeders. That doesn't mean the information out there isn't useful, but its veracity is suspect. I think many American breeders of Mammoth Donkeys may just be a little less formal in their approach to breeding than the dollars available in the horse world have demanded of quality horse breeders. The mood among Mammoth breeders may be reflected in the stated thoughts of one such producer that one "can never go wrong with good confirmation and disposition for any animal no matter where they came from."



At one point, the American Mammoth Donkey was considered its own breed. Producers developed it to fit the unique needs of the American farmer, starting with George Washington himself. My web-based search on the subject produced the following abstract from 1917 in the Journal of Animal Science. (For the entire abstract, See http://jas.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/1917/1/131)


"The American Jack Stock is a distinct breed made by blending imported breeds from Spain, France, and the Islands of the Mediterranean Sea.

"General George Washington was the first breeder in America, and our own Hon. Henry Clay imported and introduced the best obtainable foreign blood. Messrs Young and Everett of Montgomery County, Kentucky, in 1840 imported a great old jack named Mammoth from the Province of Catalonia, Spain. The Leers of Bourbon County imported two famous jacks named Napoleon and Moro Castle. The latter jack and a grandson of Imp. Mammoth went to Tennessee as foundation sires for that state. Later Tennessee breeders became extensive importers from Spain. But the business of importing jack stock ceased some years ago when it was found that the breed of American Jack stock is superior to any similar stock in Europe. (emphasis mine. PG)

"The breed of American Jacks is the product of constructive breeding performed during seventy years mainly by intelligent breeders in Kentucky, and Tennessee, but Missouri is now adding some substantial contributions to the breed." J. J. Hooper and W. S. Anderson,
Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station





Today's photos reflect 3 generations of Mammoth Jacks, starting with my Rusty above. The next photo in line is of Sugarcreek Oakie, his sire. The last photo is of Oklahoma Diamond, his paternal grandsire--all three fine specimens in my view.

I am ever thankful to George Washinton for fathering this free nation, for I live the American Dream. Whats more? I should like to add kudos to this father of the gentlemen's pursuit of Mammoth Jacks and mules!






Here's an example of what is in my genes. Happy 13th Kailee!! (She can't date until she is 18 and yes I have a gun...or more)