The St George Pioneer Trek documentary

I couldn't quite figure out how to embed the video, but you can watch the whole thing here.  It is about 23 minutes long, and captures the essence of the experience pretty well, with some good food for thought.

The St George City 150th birthday Pioneer Trek documentary

How'd they do it?

Minnie Pearl and the Accidental Tourist

Her:  We have a 15 year old exchange student from Japan coming to live with us for two months, Dear.

Me:  Japan?  Where's that?  Does he speak English?  

Her:  Pffft!  What do you mean where's Japan?  And no he doesn't speak English.

Me:  So what is he here for?  

Her:  He is here to have the full cultural experience of living with an American family and doing whatever they do day to day, going where ever they go, that kind of thing.

Me:  Has he ever seen a horse or a mule?  Does he like John Wayne?

Her:  I don't know?  Why don't you ask him yourself when he gets here?

Me:  You know I'm going to make a mule-skinner out of him, don'tcha?

Her: Yes Dear.  

************

His name is Yuya.  Night number 2,  we watched The Cowboys on the big screen.  By the time it was over, he had learned that his favorite movie star was John Wayne, which he could declare with the coolest accent you ever heard.  Ever heard a Japanese kid say "John Wayne?"  You need to.

He began doing chores with Preston each morning and night starting on day one.  He got so good at it, that we let him do it all by himself while Preston was gone for 3 days last week.

Then we dressed him up like the real deal and put him on Minnie Pearl.  He asked for no quarter, and we gave him none.  After 7 hours in the saddle Saturday doing everything we did from running in the flats, to scrambling over the ledges, he smiled and said he liked it.  The next day, he said he wasn't saddle sore.

What a tough little buggar!  What a great little mule.  

Yuya and Minnie Pearl!  Glad you came to stay.  Gonna miss you when you leave...

Dan Stephenson on the sweetest Tennessee Walking mule...

Cattle Punchin' Facebook

There are two kinds of noise that dull the senses.  Both are found in the city.  And both can be avoided in the places where cattle range.  One type of noise is of the discordant, analogue variety which rattles against your eardrums like the loose exhaust on an old pickup driving down a washboardy dirt road.  The living city pulses with this type of noise as the sound of traffic, sirens, and frenetic movement bang, clank and rumble until your ears finally become brittle and wear out.

The other type of noise is of the digital variety which rattles in your brain like the skywave chatter one finds while scanning the AM radio dial after dark.  Today's city throbs with bits and bytes, pushing information to boxes that sit on our desks and fit in our pockets until relevant truths get lost in the white-noise of it all.  Nearly every human and every piece of information on Earth is accessible to me through the iPhone in my hand, at light speed!  No wonder driving cows is such a relief.   Even in the quiet of this place, tinnitus rings in my ears, and my brain chomps at the bit for the next piece of news.  It almost takes great effort not to hear it.

I waited a long time to join the smart phone revolution.  The fear of breaking an expensive computer kept me in the dumb phone market because I could get mil-spec toughness there.  My old Casio is the first phone that outlasted me.  But in my profession, it isn't wise to get behind the technology curve, so I finally wandered into the Verizon store and wrapped an iPhone in an Otterbox with the hopes that it will survive what a mule-skinner can dish out.

So as I sat on my mule Saturday punching cows, I realized my new phone will take pretty good photos... which led to the next realization that I could push those photos to Facebook with the help of my new digital secretary, Siri.  Before the mules were loaded back in the horse trailer, much to my delight, friends and relatives from diverse time zones saw my cattle drive through the buck-horn sights of Calamity Jane's ears and had their say-so.  And from the mesa tops East, above the Hurricane fault, Ballard's cows unwittingly punched Facebook.

My sweet girl-kid 

Little Uncle Sam in the duster.

Leon and Andy hidin' under hat

Back in line you leather headed heifers

Kolob formations dead ahead

All is well... Preston on his own self-broke mule, Senator

The view from Canaan

Arizona Strip

 To say you can see Zion from Canaan is to make a declaration of Biblical proportions.  If Zion is Heaven on Earth, then I think we found another piece of it today. In fact, we not only saw Zion to the North and East, but we saw Pine Valley Mountain (largest laccolith on Earth) to the West; the Arizona Strip to the West and South; and Bryce Canyon's Paunsegaunt towering over Zion to the East--each of which are  destinations in their own right.

Andy Ballard and Leon Gubler knew the route to the abandoned lumber drop off the West face of Canaan Mountain.  Getting up on Canaan Mountain from Short Creek canyon is a bit rough, and the light snow on the sandstone was slick as ice.  Between icy streams and snow covered sandstone, we had about 4 or 5 fall-downs.  Thankfully no persons or, even more importantly, no animals were harmed in the making of this story.  (Got that PETA?)

We took the Outlaw Trail up out of the deep Short Creek canyon into the newly designated Canaan Mountain Wilderness.  The trail gets its name from its illegal construction by some 4-wheeler enthusiasts who hacked the trail out of the mountainside with heavy equipment and concrete saws.  God bless 'em too, because there just isn't any other good way to get to the lumber drop now that the feds have closed the roads into her heart. The Squirrel Trail, which we accessed to come back off the Canaan, used to be the only way up--and it definitely isn't for the faint of heart.  The year-old Outlaw Trail makes getting where we went and back a one-day project, where before, it was too risky or too far.

The pioneers who named her Canaan knew, from the view on her forested sandstone tops, that such a name was more than just hyperbole.

Zion

Pine Valley Mountain in backdrop

Paunsegaunt (Bryce Canyon) over Zion

Canaan Gap, Arizona Strip

Mule Skinner

Lumber drop

Dizzy Much?

Cable Spool at the lumber drop

How'd they do it?

150 years ago, on December 2nd, a group of roughly 300 pioneers arrived in St George to establish a cotton producing settlement.  The group had been called to leave their current homes by Brigham Young for a fresh start in, what many considered, the next closest terrain to Hell . It wasn't as big as some of the other westward migrations, nor as fraught with tragedy, but we still came home after trying it ourselves, asking, "how'd they do it?"

Originally, the Dixie Cotton mission wagon train reenactment planned to start in Salt Lake City and make the 300 mile journey South to St George.  But as tough as it must have been for the original settlers to move their lives across distance and hostile high-desert topography, it turned out to be virtually impossible to make it in wagon train form today.  Too much infrastructure in the way. And more importantly, too many entities to please.  The regulatory burden caused St George City to trim the journey to the final 100 plus miles from Parowan to St George--and that, across a different path than the original settlers took.  We spent 8 days in October making the journey.

The single most difficult part of moving across the landscape the way they did had to be taking care of the animals.  We had it relatively easy...we brought our own hay along with us, and the city delivered water right to our individual camps.  The city also cooked our meals.  Even with the reduced work load, we were up early and late to bed just taking care of our mules and horses.  Our pioneer ancestors had to live on their own supplies, cook their own meals, make their own repairs from whatever was on hand, find their own water, and... somehow... make sure the animals for all 300 of them got enough to eat each night in preparation for the next day's travel.  The sparse forage in the late fall was fairly poor in nutritional value, and the competition for it must have been fierce.   Who stayed up all night making sure the animals could range enough to get fed?

I don't know if our predecessors enjoyed their trek.  But we sure did!  How'd they do it?

Childhood and Mule Trains

Among the rich traditions surrounding The Dixie Lion's Roundup rodeo in St George, Utah, the Grand Entry is the most inclusive.  Each night, for two hours before the rodeo starts, the Dixie Lion's Club opens the arena to all riders, who, add a festive air to the historic SunBowl while jealous fans guard their seats.  From rough-riding Arizona Strip cowboys to bejeweled rodeo queens, from Dixie newcomers to native sons and daughters, the rodeo opener is an important social gathering where old friends catch up while riding side-by-side to the sounds and smells of Rodeo.  Live country music competes with human chatter and the soft pounding of hooves in freshly tilled dirt.   The savory smells of rodeo-hamburgers wafting over earthy-livestock, fill the arena.  It is heady stuff, for riders and spectators alike--who come under the influence of anticipation .  Moments before showtime, as if breaking a spell, the smooth voice of professional rodeo announcer, Reed Flake, takes control of the random gathering and empties the arena in preparation for the Grand Entry.  After a pregnant pause filled with thoughts of welcome, patriotism and sponsors, his command brings the random gathering back into the arena behind billowing flags--running the traditional serpentine pattern that kicks off the beginning of the greatest show on Earth.

After leading a string of pack mules in the Saturday afternoon parade, I went directly into the Dixie Sunbowl to participate in the Grand Entry.  Behind me, Calamity Jane carried a beautiful pack job, sporting a real canvas manty with a nice symmetrical double-diamond hitch tied over her load, while Minnie Pearl caboosed our train, packing two coolers full of ice and drinks slung over her sawbucks.  Mule trains are not something one usually sees at the Dixie Roundup--in fact the only mules one would normally expect to see are the ones that professional-funnyman, Randy Munns, dresses up clown-style with coveralls and a bobbly cowboy hat riding on a spring between its long ears.  

Last night, along the edge of the arena, throngs of children lined up to get autographs from celebritous beauties, dressed in sequined ribbons and tiara clad hats. Youngsters hoping to touch the soft nose of a real live horse stretched eager arms through the fences.  Curious kids of all ages wondered about my train of longears and I began pulling the string along side of the cabled wall to let one small kid after another climb into the saddle in front of me for a lap around the arena--with the approval of parents who eagerly helped them over the fence.  We would go into the arena's center and turn the train in a circle so tight that we were nose on tail for a couple of turns.  I would sing out, "GIDDUP MULE TRAIN!  HYAAAAAH!"  Then we would pull up next to the stands and trade riders.  Most of the kids giggled and talked happily--which I could barely hear over the din as I worked to keep the train moving in proper fashion.  One 3 year old boy asked me with grown-up politeness, "Mr.  What is your name?"  Another 4 year old girl heard me yell at Calamity to, "Get back in line!"  For the rest of the ride, she kept yelling back, "Get back in line!  Get back in line!" doing her best to help me out.  Even from the grandstands after her turn was over, I would hear her yell each time I pulled the train up to switch riders, "Get back in line!"   It was a piece of magic that I will likely never forget, and I suspect most of those cute little kids won't either.  One group of parents tried to thank me as the call came to empty the arena, and wondered aloud why I was willing to spend the entire time giving rides when it was obviously a bit of a handful.  I just tipped my hat and rode out of the arena with a lump in my throat, and a lightness of heart that  comes with the sweetness of childhood and mule trains.

File photo from last year:  Too many of my hands were full of rein, rope and kid to take pictures last night.  If something turns up--I'll replace this one with the real thing.  :)