The Great Divide: A tale of two oceans

Lightening intruded aggressively, breaking into the darkness in the most painful way.  Before our eyes could re-adapt to the dark, another blinding flash would tease some tiny detail out of the foreboding blackness of the forest.  Every tree looked like a bear and the thunder that followed added anxiety to the taughtness of Molly Mule's muscles.  She felt like a coiled spring between my legs.  It was late Saturday night... and we were headed for camp much later than we had planned.  Three blown trailer tires in the middle of the previous night as we traveled across central Utah, a return to the trail-head for a dog that stayed under my trailer after getting halfway to camp, and two runaway horses that had to be chased and re-caught, had put Nephew Adam and I several hours behind the rest of the already-late group.

As the staccato snap of rain hitting my hat gave rhythm to intermittent claps of thunder, the push and shove of the wind made pine trees groan, but filled our lungs with the sweet taste of rain-washed mountain air.  We hadn't slept now for two nights and fatigue didn't help us penetrate the thick WindRiver blackness.  If we could locate camp, we still had animals to unpack and care for before we could make shelter for ourselves.  What a rush!  Adam's fear was palpable as he queried, "Do you have a flashlight Uncle Paul?"   In my saddle bags there is one if we need it I replied.  "So how are we going to find camp?" he wanted to know.  It was a good question.  I was pretty sure we were on the trail, but we couldn't see it.  The Winds are big enough that a wrong turn in the dark could put you far from your goal.  We'll figure it out was my tired reply.  I had a hunch the mules knew where they were going.  After what seemed like an eternity, Molly took a sharp left turn into a small tree lined clearing.  We picked our way through the vacant darkness on what seemed like even less of a trail, down a steep hill, over some boulders.  Suddenly, we broke into camp on the edge of the meadow along the NorthWest corner of Raid Lake.  Everyone else was holed up against the storm, and their horses and mules nickered their welcome.

It was the beginning of a perfect week in the prettiest of mountain ranges.   While exploring about 70 miles of country that was new to us, we made a cowboy out of Adam, and schooled the very young Preston and Trevor.  Only the fishing was sub-par.  We made our trek this year with 12 animals and 7 people.

Getting your kid permission to have a week out of school takes an act of congress these days.  We applied for an "educational leave" this year and so a geography lesson was in order for our 2011 WindRiver's trip.  Hands on lessons being what they are, I don't think any one of us will forget the significance of standing on the Great Continental Divide.  Just pee a little to the left and you are leaking into the Pacific ocean...a little to the right and you will probably end up watering the Atlantic via the Gulf of Mexico.  It made a deep impression on 8 year old Preston's mind.   The strong wind on Washakie pass that day made watering both oceans a difficult task.

Like each year in the past, getting ready for the WindRivers is a big task.  Animals, equipment, gear, and food all have to be prepared.  These aren't relaxing vacations in the normal sense of the word.  There is a bit of stress involved, a few cuss words, and a lot of work--but they recharge life's batteries in a way that sitting on the beach can't touch.  Riding through Washakie Pass was elevating to the soul.  Seeing and peeing down both sides of the Great Divide is a mans prerogative and it allowed us to touch this country from sea to shining sea.  Two oceans--both falling from one lofty mountain pass.

Post Script:  A hearty thanks to Trent Harmon for getting up after midnight to open his store and sell us tires in Nephi (Harmon Tire).  Thanks to Jim Wallick, Brandon Larson, and my good Brother Mike as well for a fabulous trip.  And big thanks to Roy over at Jaxonbilt Hats for keeping our heads covered in every condition imaginable--and that is no paid endorsement.

Buckles and Beauty in Atlanta

"Wow!  What is that on your belt buckle?" she exclaimed as she peered over her reading glasses from behind the cash register.  I was in Atlanta, connecting to Nashville, with a 3 hour layover.  Its a mule, Ma'am.  "A mule!?  What's a mule?"  A mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse.  I raise them and train them.  "Really!...  I never heard of that!  Now what you go and do that for?  I mean, why you do that?  Is it like...a...business?...hear that girls?  He raises MULES!"  By this time, the line behind me has started to get impatient.  Airports aren't places to hold up traffic.  So I stepped aside and said, go ahead and take care of the line and I'll answer your questions when there is a break.  "OK.  But don't you go anywhere, til you tell me what you do with those mules now, ya hear?"


For the next half hour, I watched Kim take care of customers, one at a time.  She found one special thing about each person to whom she served refreshement--their hair, their dress, where they were headed, and then she paid them a sincere complement, usually getting a surprised look.  Several times we tried to catch a moment to resume our conversation, but the line kept coming.  I marveled at the smiles she pulled out of each customer inside one of the most impersonal places of American Life--an international airport.  Finally, I just ordered my smoothie and explained that the mules were partly for raising my kids, and partly a way for me to explore the wilderness that surrounds my home in the West.  But that answer seemed to provoke even more curiosity.  Since the line of customers behind me was never going to allow us to fill in the details, I left her with a handwritten note and directions to see "Longears and Sourdough" for its pictures and stories.

As I walked away, I thought about how beautiful it is to see someone who conducts their job, whatever it is, with such grace, that you feel like you have been in the presence of greatness upon the observance of their expertise.  Kim, I watched you bring a moment of happiness to everyone you served--strangers all, but friends when they left your deli in concourse C, grinning.  For me, it was a mule on a buckle and your curiosity that sparked my smile.  But it was the milk of human kindness you showed for the masses of strange faces who you will never see again, that made my smile last far after I boarded my flight to Nashville.

Green Energy and Mule Fuel

In the Wilderness Economy, there is only one way to transport goods and services.  By law, transportation in the wilderness must use technology that pre-dates the wheel.  That means all internal combustion engines must burn hay, mitochondrial style; and all locomotion must be ambulatory.  So by logical extension, railroads, stagecoaches and semi trucks are illegal in the back country, leaving the mule train as the only real option.  Turns out the mule train is environmentally friendly.  They eat green fuel and have the greenest emissions my eye-meter has ever seen. The carbon foot print of a mule train can't be bigger than a mule's hoof.

Over the past couple of months, I took a job hauling a little over 2000 lbs of water, food and gear into the new Red Mountain Wilderness area for some archaeologists who are surveying for antiquities.

Mule Train work is good honest work if you can get it, really.  Not that it pays well.  I can make better pay while bending light in an Optometric sweat shop.  But it makes for a pleasant day.  Mules are smart, and they have a love language all their own--profanity, which makes for an artful conversation that one would never hear in an eye doctors office.  It sounds like, "Molly, you leather-headed jackhorse, get back in line," or, "Minnie Pearl!  You half-brained, half-assed horse--stop kicking Maggie!" or "Calamity, you long-eared sumbeeeech, GIT along and quit pulling back on your ROPE!"  It may sound rude to your ears, but to the MULE, these are terms of endearment.

Now I got myself thinking about the mess our world is in today while I was locomoting that mule train through the woods.  My friends Patty and Jackson (not their real names) are always trying to help me save the world from too much freedom and too much heat.  I want to do my level best to help out, so, as I was thinking,  I realized something quite profound, right out of the blue...er green.  Profanity has some useful thermal properties that could be used as a type of refrigerant.  I've known it since I was a small child, too.  I'll never forget the icy stare that froze my mother the day I said in a commanding 8 year-old voice to my 3 year-old brother, Mike, "Com'ere you little Bastard!"  And the fact that she used Tabasco sauce to unfreeze my tongue, like a university physics experiment, taught me some tangible thermodynamic principles that you could never learn from a book--like Don't ever say what ain't true! and Never insult your Parents. So today, while Patty and Jackson sat in climate controlled comfort somewhere, googling a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere, I was gently burning hay instead of coal or oil, and cooling the atmosphere with my artfully profane mule talk.

Who gets paid to camp?  Sweet!

Frank Parish leads Maggie

Kissin Kate Barlow,  Sulphur Mustang Extraordinaire

Molly and Kate

Unable to find another load for the return leg, the mule-train comes home empty

Mule Fuel

Filling the barn

Happiness is refueling

Two Seasons and the Beginners Rodeo

Here, where the Great Basin tangles with the Colorado Plateau and the Mojave Desert, there are only two seasons: Desert Season and Mountain Season.  For the last 8 months, we have been riding the desert, but the short Mountain Season has started and it is time to crawl up out of the furnace and start enjoying the cool comforts of pine, aspen and meadow.

Going into the wilderness, one-on-one with my 8 year old son is paternal happiness at its best.  Getting there with pack mules is a test of will power and teaches some important life lessons.  Every time we saddle up, we have what we call the beginners rodeo, in which everybody is excited and full of energy until they settle in to the rhythm of the trail.   On this trip, it was the pup who wouldn't follow, and four spirited mules that wanted to move.  We finally had to tie the pup on top of Preston's pack mule, Minnie Pearl.  Minutes later, Minnie Pearl got loose and ran full steam back toward the truck, pup and pack in tow--then full speed back to where she left us. But we got it worked out.  Just like life, if you can stay in the saddle through the tricky phase of doing something new, things smooth out and find their place.   Then the frustrations are forgotten and the trip is mighty enjoyable.

As twilight settled over the meadow where we camped that evening, the mules alerted us to some deer that were grazing upon the fresh spring grass.  Ears forward, all four mules were fixated on the intruding deer, and our hearts pounded as we strained to see through the graying light to see what was coming our way.  When we finally crawled into our tent for the night, Preston asked me to wake him up early to go look for more deer. 

As soon as the horizon began to soften the next morning, we saddled the riding mules and headed towards Quaking Aspen Spring and the Comanche cabin.  The morning air smelled still and cool, laced with pine and sage.  Deer moved all around us while we rocked in our saddles.  As we came to the Kolob overlook, the stately red towers that form the Hand of God beckoned, come hither, from across the valley below.  

Here, where fatherhood tangles with boy and man, there are only two seasons: Formative Season and Independent Season.  Like summer in the high country, the Formative Season is short--sometimes stormy, but always beautiful.  I wouldn't trade one minute of the time I get with my kids during their formative years for lands or gold.  This boy is learning to be fiercely independent, and the long season of life where he will walk his own path is ahead of us... somewhere not too far off, at the end of summer.

The pup, Little Joe, riding on Minnie Pearl

White Rocks Meadow, Preston on Senator

Filet grilled in garlic and olive oil, Dutch Oven style, for breakfast

The Gusts came up 2nd day, Kolob in the background.

The Kolob Fingers from Pine Mountain

The Joy of Fatherhood

It was warm for the first time this year as we left the house, headed for an overnighter on the Arizona Strip. Both of us rode saddle mules, while leading a pack mule with camping gear and coolers full of ice cold drinks.  We rode far enough to find a starry night-sky.  Spring's green carpet covered the desert as a token of thanks for an extra wet winter.

My boy did a man's job getting our coolers safely to camp.  Minnie Pearl had her moments, so he learned what it means to get rope-burned hands.  He also laughed at me when I tried to catch her loose lead right as my molly lunged up a hill--leaving me in a backwards somersault into the soft dirt.  As we plodded along, he chortled his 7 year old conversation, and sang--mostly "Ride Cowboy Ride."  He says it is one of his favorites, and he thinks Riders of the Purple Sage sings it best.  His palpable sense of accomplishment when we wrapped it all up the next day animated my manhood .  Ahhhhhh... to be the Sire of fine sons and daughters.  There is no other privilege on Earth that compares.   And there is no high that stacks up to the Joy of Fatherhood.

So, will they have Bacon in Heaven?

Pretty much, the question we all ask at sometime or another, is...do they have Bacon in Heaven?  Perhaps, knowing the answer will help those souls who still haven't made up their minds to try for yon Glory.  So...we saddled the mules this weekend and headed up the hill, determined to find out once and for all, the answer to that  most important question.  And here are the pictures--they tell the story.  No photoshop here, just vivid proof that there IS pork in paradise.   Hmmnnn...come to think of it, we didn't see a bunch of virgins waiting for Achmed the Dead Terrorist either.

Thanks Natalie for smelling up facebook with your bacon bouquet.  This morning makes two days in a row!

Bacon!  Essential Nutrient, and the only way to fry eggs.

First Date

At first blush, this may appear to be off blog-topic. It is not. File this one under the consistent thread of parenting that adorns Longears and Sourdough. Tonight, I send Daughter Number One, who just made sweet sixteen, off on her first date. Dressed in a modest formal, she and her date join two other couples for a Preference dance at her high school. As she leaves the house, the thought strikes me, "I just sent my first daughter on her premier date and I'm totally comfortable with it." I must really take it for granted that she is on the right track. Poised, confident, graceful...Daughter Number One moves with purpose and is constantly up to something good. Suddenly, my shirt feels too tight. But the story doesn't end there.

While Daughter Number One is on her date, her Mom and I are first-time chaperones at a church dance for all the youngsters in our region. We enter the church and I begin to sweat. Twenty Six years have removed me from the teenaged dance scene. The dance hall is full of young people swaying oddly to music completely alien to my ears. Our instructions are to see that the young dancers adhere to standards of modesty and decency at the dance. One young lady dances into view, obviously stretching the rules with a revealing dress. I can ride herd on the girls at home if they stretch their modesty, but I'm not a very good cop in this foreign environment, so I look away as she repeatedly adjusts her uncomfortably, low cut top. The rest of the room is packed with youth dressed in their best Sunday-go-to-meetings.

The sea of youth gyrate in alternating cycles of chaos and synchronicity. They move at random mostly, then like a leaderless school of mackerel, the room becomes a unity of saltatory motion. I try to remember my own au courant swim to find my youthful purpose in life, but I have forgotten how to act in this water.

Milling around, I see Mom surrounded by a group of boys. She has their undivided attention, so I saunter over, trying not to collide with the graceful leaps and frenzied kicks of the dancers. Drawing near, she points to me saying, "and this is Kailee Gooch's dad." With all the fainting enthusiasm of teenage girls at an Elvis concert, they turn to me, grabbing my hand, one by one. "Really!? You are Kailee Gooch's dad!?" one boy cries. Another violently shakes my hand, "SO glad to meet you!" A third exclaims, "Kailee is the COOLEST person on Planet Earth!" In a flash of silver light, the mackerel reverse direction and I go from faceless chaperone to celebrity extraordinaire. Nothing in life has prepared me for the sudden, soul-piercing swell of parental emotion that floods the little I-am in my core. And Life's greatest mantle...Father, adorns my purpose.

She Rode a Stately Jack

I think a couple of my nieces will just never be satisfied to see the world through a pair of short ears again after the spectacular day we spent yesterday on the Red Mountain trail above Snow Canyon. Brother Mike and I took Sister Susie and her whole family to the scenic Kayenta overlook.

Sister Susie was nearly overcome with anxiety at the prospect of us putting her kids on mules and going somewhere a little fun. And she was a bit worried about her own fun as well. Mike and I have been grown up for so long, we had forgotten how much fun it is to torment a younger sister...

The video was shot in HD. Click "Watch on Youtube" and see it full screen for better quality--not sure why it is so grainy on the blog. A few of the photos are from the Christmas Eve ride to the Goblin pots and were added to complete the picture.

The Places we go with Jim: Base Jumping

For the past couple of years, I have tried with photos and words to describe some of the fantastic places I have been blessed to enjoy atop my mules. But with a new pocket sized wonder-of-a-camera, I can now shoot up to two hours of HD video. So for something a little different, I am going to post a few short videos that tell their own stories...

This is part one of a series I call, "The Places We Go With Jim." He rides his horse in places that few dare trod. We ride together often. They aren't all high angle like this one, but they are all beautiful. Enjoy a little base jumping here. Sometimes I wish I had a parachute just in case.

The Roar of the Mammoth

Rusty's bray is no heehaw. It is the tone clear, guttural call of the wild, and from the saddle, it penetrates the soul. So for something a little different, enjoy Rusty's signature cry from the saddle-eye view.