My kids always wanted to go with us on pack trips. But anyone that’s been around horses knows that even the most gentle horse can become a 1,000 pounds of terror if things happen to go wrong somehow.
We finally decided to take the kids on a short pack trip into the Gila Wilderness. We parked at the corrals and unloaded the stock and saddled up. We fitted the packsaddles on the mules, filled the panniers with groceries and gear, put the lash tarps on, tied them down, and we headed out.
I’ve been on enough pack trips to know that you always expect at least one good wreck of some kind. It’s just standard procedure. That’s why I didn’t relish the idea of taking kids along when they were little. I decided they finally were getting big enough, and tough enough, to tag along so off we went.
For the first several miles, it was smooth as silk. But then we came to a gate!
I’ll never forget this gate. It sounds simple. It’s just a gate, right? Well that pasture gate was only about 4 feet wide. Somebody got off and opened it and we started through.
There were lots of trees, rocks, and brush and we had 7 horses and 3 pack mules. One of which I was dragging along.
It created a bottleneck on the other side of the gate and there wasn’t much room to navigate. I was towards the end of the line and my youngest son, Roy, and one more were still behind me waiting to come through the gate.
I started dragging that hard headed lazy mule through the gate and I had to turn to one side in order to go far enough so as the last couple riders could come through and the gate could be closed.
It all sounds easy, but when I came through, I steered my horse right and the mule went left. I had the lead rope dallied around the saddle horn and the mule hit the end and took up the slack and it whipped him around and scared him.
That stupid hard headed mule then tried to run past me on the offside of my dally, which put the lead rope behind my horse which then slipped up under my horses tail which then caused my horse to start bucking!
Now Roy-Boy might’ve been around 6 years old at the time, and he was behind me when things started going south. When you’re on a horse that’s bucking, it seems like an eternity. (I guess that’s why in a rodeo you only have to stay on for 8 seconds.)
Anyway, I unwrapped my dally, turned loose of the lead rope, and hung on for dear life. Now my horse had clamped his tail down on that rope and kept on a bucking. Finally the rope slipped out, my horse let out a grunt and a fart and finally started slowing down. I couldn’t believe I didn’t get pitched off into a tree, or busted my skull open on a rock.
The whole time Roy- Boy was cheering me on in the background yelling “ride em cowboy!” and “you got this dad!” Everybody else was laughing. I’m not sure if it was at me, or Roy-Boy, my one man cheerleading squad, cheering me on to victory… but I survived.
Roy-Boy later said I should’ve been a rodeo bronc rider, “but next time I should work the spurs a little more.”
I was a hero to that boy and that’s all he talked about for a long time. But me, I was just hanging on for dear life.
Good times.
