Читать книгу Last Grand Adventure - Howard Ph.D West - Страница 4

To get us lined out and headed in the right direction, I'll explain some of the events preceding the journey.

The whole adventure began when I gave my wife, Carol, two gray donkeys (Beef and Bean) for her birthday, because they were wild burros that had been used by a roper for roping practice: they were afraid of horses, people, and ropes. Carol fell in love with those two shaggy animals and quickly gentled them with grain and a curry comb. Where I had the job of out thinking and convincing them that what I wanted was their idea. Most people who don’t like donkeys: have been out smarted by one.

We were living in Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley, California at the time and one month after acquiring our two new friends Beef and Bean we took them out on a two-week pack trip into the Panamint Mountains of Death Valley National Monument. We had a great time exploring even though all did not go smoothly; Christmas Carol said: “let Beef follow us he will be GOOD.” Beef got away and went running and bucking away from us spewing our groceries and camp gear over a mile of terrain before we got him under control again.

We couldn't let a few difficulties stop us. That trip hooked us into a whole new lifestyle. Carol had swallowed the adventure of living life "on the move" hook, line and sinker and we returned home to Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley hungering for more.

Four months later we were back in those same mountains again for a four month pack-trip. The best parts of the trip were exploring old mines and ghost towns, hiking three hundred miles over some of the loneliest country still on earth and meeting a few fun eccentrics.

Those were the best parts. The worst parts were having to hike through the awful heat of a Death Valley summer, Carol's frightening bout with sunstroke, suffering through several dry camps without access to any water, and later being held-up by a rogue park ranger with a semi-automatic rifle. This government employee spent hours watching us burst in to camp with gun drawn flak jacket in place and screamed Park Police who thought we were “Gun Runners.” With Burros? He asked “what are you doing” Having lunch would you like some?” I said. Our government at work.

After those four months, we came out of the mountains as lean as wolves with a wild look about our eyes that frightened our friends. Carol gasped the first time she got a look at herself in a mirror and declared, "I look like I've just come out of a Nazi concentration camp! I don't ever want to be this thin again - it's horrible being so skinny and hollow-eyed!" Her friends thought we looked GREAT: “you’re so slim and trim maybe I should try your Jackass Diet.”

Even though we had suffered, we weren't about to give up on this new way of living we had discovered. It was too exciting. By the time Carol's Birthday was coming again I had decided that to solve our problems we'd go to the Bureau of Land Management (B.L.M.) Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Corrals in Ridgecrest, California to get "just one more" birthday burro for Carol? So we could haul more water.

We ended up adopting four matched blacks (Rags, Chaps, Diz and Dean) that had been gentled by previous owners and used as a four-up in draft work. Carol was excited about the new additions to our little family and it wasn't long before Carol was begging me to get her a wagon and harness so she could exercise all six at once.

The wagon came to us in November. It was pulled into Furnace Creek Ranch by four smart and eager Welsh dark red ponies with flaxen manes and tails as a part of the annual Death Valley Forty-niner Encampment Parade. A sign on the side of it declared, "MY DESERT HOME IS FOR SALE."

We followed the parade and talked to Bob Cornelius, the owner, about buying the miniature, green, covered wagon. He told us that Laverne Gentert built it in 1967 for a trip into Death Valley. He said he'd sell it to us for $850.00.

Every cent that we could get our hands on went into the purchase of that wagon and later that afternoon Bob's son, Chester, delivered it, via those high-stepping Welsh ponies, right to the front yard of the fifth-wheel trailer we were renting!

I started saving up money for harness. By our anniversary in March I was able to purchase one set of pony harness from Bob Cornelius, and two sets from his friend, Bob Cleveland. Carol said “Thank you for my Anniversary presents.”

Providentially for us though all sets are different they are all close enough in looks, i.e., black leather with silver "dots," that unless they are closely examined they all appear to be alike.

Now, we were complete with six willing donkeys who hate to stand unused in a corral, three sets of antique harness, and a miniature wagon. We mixed them all together and the wild rides began!

It was a hair-raising time. I'd load the wagon heavily with hay-bales, hitch up a span of just two burros at a time, give my wife a hand up and turn the team out into the desert sand of Death Valley. You'd think that a heavy load in soft sand would keep them slow - but not so. They would charge at full speed out through the humps and holes of the desert, swerving right, and left, as they tried to outrun the wagon.

Slow-minded Rags would just beat the front of the wagon to splinters, every time it was his turn. He would play a regular tat too drum beat on the old wood with his hind hoofs while I was thanking God for a wagon with a high seat and Carol was hanging on for dear life and praying out loud!

It wasn't long before the burros settled down and got used to the wagon and since their training was going so smoothly, I decided that traveling with the wagon was not such a bad idea.

We could carry more water, (of course we needed more now that we had more animals) and carry hay too. I figured that we'd start this new way of traveling by going up to Virginia City, Nevada and then come straight back to Death Valley before winter.

I'm sure we discussed division of labor before we left on our journey, even though neither of us remembers the chat. I do remember that I was expected to do the driving because Carol gets nervous when she has those important six ribbons in hand (so nervous that she forgets what to do with all six of them) and because she declares that it all takes more muscle than she's got. She would wrap the swing and wheeler’s lines around the post on the dash board and pick up the lines of the leaders and think she was in charge. The boys were good for her as long as there are no turns to be made.

I also remember that because I have a talent for camp cookery that I'd be cook and she'd do the clean-up.

As a jack-of-all-trades I had done plenty of cooking to earn my living and I had been used to driving a pair of Belgian Draft Horses four or five times a week as a part of my job wrangling horses at Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley, so I felt fully qualified for those jobs. However, I was soon to find out that wrestling with six lines of leather all day long is a job that stands all by itself in the category of pain and grit. Especially in desert heat where the lines are often too hot to touch with a bare hand.

In the planning stages of our trip, neither of us realized the amount of sheer hard work that it would take to keep our hitch on the road. And, maybe it's just as well that I didn't, because I would have been overwhelmed. As it was, we put a fresh coat of paint on our little wagon, loaded it with hay, and made our bed on top of the hay (even though Carol is allergic to alfalfa) all in a dither of happiness!

We left Death Valley National Park early in the morning on the second day of May, headed east to the ghost town of Death Valley Junction. We knew we would have to push hard that first day to get outside of the federal lands (where we couldn't camp legally) to some private land at Navel Springs where we had landowner's permission to camp and access to water. Water and camping were the two most important subjects to be considered and reconsidered every day for the next two years!)

We started out with a basic plan to stay in the remoter parts of Nevada and travel one hundred thirty miles north to Tonopah first, to take part in their annual 'Jim Butler Days' celebration, then continue on to Virginia City before turning back along the same route and home again. We just didn't realize that we wouldn't want to turn back when we got to Virginia City. I'll tell you more about that later...

Anyway, we made our start by attempting the first ten miles to Navel Springs, and it was hot. It reached 97⁰ by noon and we were climbing up out of Death Valley from an elevation of 282 feet below sea level to a pass that reached 3,000 feet above sea level. It might not have seemed so bad if we were by ourselves but we had dozens of tourists stop to take photos of us that the burros immediately got the idea that when a car stopped near us they should stop too!

I was determined to make the needed miles before we quit for the day and all the stops were hindering us so I handed Carol those six leather ribbons that she's afraid to hold, hooked a lead rope to our left-hand leader and led out, running the gauntlet of tourists by ignoring all I could and keeping my head down with my hat pulled over my face.

It was thus that Bob Cleveland (the friend of Bob Cornelius who had sold us two sets of harness) found me; trudging along with my head down and the lead rope in my hand. Being a teamster himself he didn't hesitate to offer advice, "Hey West," he called "Don't you know you're supposed to be driving those burros, not leading them!"

He didn't make it a question, he made it an exclamation, and then before I could answer he drove away laughing fit to die!

We stopped on the side of the highway to gulp long swallows of cool water, eat a bite of lunch, and rest about mid-day. While we were pausing there an older woman who introduced herself as Beulah Gentert of Palmdale, California approached us. My ears pricked up at hearing her surname, for Bob Cornelius had told us that the wagon was built by a man named Laverne Gentert, and as the woman continued to talk she mentioned that she and her late husband used to have a wagon like ours. I blurted out, "Yes, and I'll bet this is the very one!"

I can't say which of us was the most surprised. It did turn out that our wagon used to be her wagon, and we were able to visit together just as though we were old friends.

"It's like you folks are a memorial to my husband," she said. "I was just telling my friend in the car that it's been many a year since a covered wagon came this way and we were talking about how it (waggonering) is all dying out. Then we came over the rise and there you were.

Before we parted she told us a story of her families' most harrowing trip in the wagon. It was when their team of four Shetland ponies drew them down over the steep and dangerous Trail Canyon Switchbacks (located in the Panamint Mountains) to the floor of Death Valley.

It was so dangerous, she explained, that her husband who had a heart condition had to stop at the top of the pass and take a handful of tranquilizers before he could work up enough courage to drive over the top and down the switchbacks. She said that her grown son was with them and that he kept the wagon on the curves of the narrow trail by jumping from side to side in the wagon bed as they careened downward.

It made our hair stand on end just to hear the story, and how were we to know, that hot afternoon, that in two years we would follow those same deadly switchbacks back into Death Valley.

We didn't know then of course and it's just as well for the pleasure we experienced in meeting Beulah colored the rest of the afternoon with happiness.

We made it to Navel Spring late in the day and the promised water almost wasn't. The caretakers had forgotten to unlock the valve for us. Luckily there were rust holes in the huge water tank and I could use one of our garden hoses (we carried two) to siphon the water up and out of the tank and into a big blue bucket for our thirsty burros!