DAY 53 - 54 

Text Post: DAY 54: I WOULD LIKE TO GIVE A SHOUT OUT TO ANGELA AND HER PARENTS, ALBERT AND HELEN. I took a wrong turn and ended up on Highway 54 near the town of Neal. We were still headed in the right direction so I decided to continue along the wide shoulder of Hwy54. After a mile we stopped because Reba was tired and the angled gravel shoulder was hard on her (she had spent the night cavorting [though the pen panels] with three other horses). I was worried about her and where we would camp even as I strongly felt like we needed to make more progress. It was about 2pm, so we still had an hour or so before camping time, but I decided the right thing to do was to call it a day. So we turned around and went south on a gravel road we had crossed just before stopping to rest. I couldn’t see any perspective campsites, I couldn’t get Google earth because my air-card had no signal, rain was in the forecast according to my dumb-phone, and the wind was picking up… I was a little lost and a little worried, but no more had we turned onto the gravel road then a car came and stopped to see what I was about, and a man named Albert (who was old enough to have farmed with horses as a boy, and was currently being chauffeured by one of his 7 grown children back from the doctor’s office) said I could camp in his barn. Dear reader, you had to be there, it was straight from God!

At Albert’s house his youngest daughter Angela showed me to the barn where I could park my wagon and camp, and a nice big pen for Reba, square bales of hay, and alfalfa cubes which Reba loves! Then after I got settled in, I was invited into the house where we sat in the living room and had a nice visit. Afterwards, as I prepared to go back to the barn, Angela handed me a card, and arriving back to the barn and opening it, I found a very nice note and kind contribution. Thank you Albert, Helen, Angela, and family for your great kindness!

Our camp in Albert’s hay barn that evening. Jill found her a nice place atop the hay bales. Thank you, Albert, Hellen, and Angela!

DAY 54: Up at 4am, packed and ready to go by 8:30, hoping for a good start on the day but as it turned out I ended up visiting with Angel and her parents that morning till about 10:30am and that was the best possible start on the day I could have had. It was a beautiful morning. I departed their farm and went towards a place called “Rocky Ford,” a river crossing just south of their farm. Regarding the river ford, Angela had said, “The road ends, but then it begins again.” And sure enough, no more had I rolled south from their barn then the road entered the woods, curved, and dropped suddenly down to end on the beach of the Walnut River. The beach was made of natural rock slabs which we traveled down looking for that place where the road continued again. I did see a place where some 4X4 trucks had crossed the river but I hoped that was not where we had to cross. After rolling a hundred yards we came to the end of the beach and I knew that the place I had seen was where we had to cross. My horse and dog both are afraid of water (Jill is getting over her fear but Reba is afraid even of mud puddles), and so I thought, “Oh no! This is going to be tough!”

Poised to ford the Walnut River. It is obvious that the concrete ramp on the other side is like 1/3 of a low water crossing, and the rest is the river’s rock bed. Reba took her time, stepping slowly, bending her head way down to look where to step next, then step again, then look, then step, and I think because the water was clear, she wasn’t very afraid, and did an excellent job! Jill on the other hand remained behind because I forgot to put her on the wagon and, left behind, she was yipping like she was being tortured! So I tied Reba off to go back and get Jill. I figured I would have to take my pants off and wade across but then there was Jill, all wet but very happy, she had swam the river, no more fear of water, which had been fading in her anyway and now was surely gone! I told Reba and Jill how proud I was of them! Unfortunately, the day would go downhill from there, but every cloud has a silver lining.

This time we get to cross the river on a bridge. 

Photo of Walnut River from bridge. Lots of tree leaves floating in the water.

A near disaster! It began when Reba didn’t want to pull today. She walked painfully slow and often stopped. It wasn’t that her feet were sore or any other aliment…she was having an attitude problem, she didn’t want to work. And to be fair to her, she’s been pulling the wagon up and down hills for over 50 days. But she’d had good food and rest, and there I was working 17 hour days, busting my tail, no rest days, and I was not in the mood for her "spoiled" behavior, especially when the onset of winter had me feeling a legitimate sense of urgency. So, after trying and trying, and getting more and more frustrated with her, I used the reins to whip her a good one right on the behind, which made her jump and go but only for a brief while. I knew it wasn’t her feet or anything else, she just didn’t want to work, so I used the ends of reins as a whip for only the second time on her in our journey, and I laid a good one on her, and she jumped so hard, she busted the wagon. She broke the part called the “evener” or “single tree” and when it busted, well that meant that her tugs came lose, so all that held her to the wagon was her break straps, which meant the wagon shafts came out of their loops on her harness and then came at her from behind like the fangs of a tiger or some terrible thing, and that made her panic and try to escape, but as soon as she slowed, the ends of the shafts would jab her again, driving her further into panic, at which point we were a runaway wagon, flying down the gravel road on the verge of disaster! I did my best to slow her with the reins, but there was little I could do other than to try to keep her on the road, it was a wild ride in the extreme! After about a ¼ mile that I will never forget, she incapacitated herself with panic and began to hyper-ventilate. I jumped off the wagon and comforted her, I was no longer mad at her, not at all. It was both our fault that the wagon had been broken; her fault for not wanting to do her part, and my fault for getting frustrated. I have to have patients with Reba, or I could ruin a very good horse, and by the same token, I have to discipline her, or I could ruin a very good horse. I looked down at the broken wagon and thought about a text message I had got from Cody the day before saying that, if I needed anything, or if I wanted to go home, just to call him and he would come with truck and trailer to take me home. Just then, and I mean just then, a man named Dan stopped in his truck and I told him what I was about and what had happened. I told Dan I could make a new evener if I had the materials and tools. Dan took me to a man named Kip, Dan then left, Kip let me cut a pipe from his scrap pile, and then took me to another man’s place who was using Kip’s welder (so I could do some welding). Before long I had a new evener thanks to Kip and Dan, an oil well worker and a rancher, rural folks willing to help a stranger in need, but not really that much of a stranger…we are a people, we have a bond, a gift from God, given to the smallest, that we may have peace, harmony, and happiness! Thank you Dan and Kip!

This is the new evener I made. I used the center bearing plate from the old evener, and also the ends from the old evener which weren’t very good and I knew it but it would have to do for a short while anyway. In the process of going from Dan to Kip, to Kip’s friend, and back to the wagon, I lost one of my tug clips, and Kip took me all over looking for it, in fact Kip spent his entire Sunday afternoon helping me. We never did find the clip, so I made a pair of clips out of bailing wire from Kip and a pair of carabineers I had in my tool box, and called it good for the time being. I hoped the lost clip was in Dan’s truck but Kip didn’t have Dan’s number and we didn’t know where Dan was, so Kip said he would check for me and mail me the clip if Dan had it. Kip also invited me to camp on his ranch, but it was only 3 miles back to Angela’s place, and so I decided to go there. I tried to give Kip some gas money but he wouldn’t take any. I shook his hand and said, “God bless you for your kindness Kip,” and just as I was about to get on the wagon, here came Dan! Dan was in his other truck but said he would go and look and if the clip was there, he would catch me on the road. So I headed off towards Angela’s and Reba pulled the wagon like she had somewhere she wanted to be, I didn’t have to ask or cajole here or anything, she just pulled the wagon like she was on a mission (to get back to the barnyard, ha! ha!). Then, just as I got to Rocky-Ford, which is just before Angela’s place, Dan caught up with me and he had the clip! Yee-ha! Thank you Kip and Dan!

VIDEO POST: DAY 54: FORDING THE WALNUT RIVER: Because we had already crossed the river once; I figured I would try to video the crossing this time. Video is 35 seconds long, and you can hear Dan behind me in his truck honking to let me know that he found the lost tug clip. I had to grab the reins with both hands because Reba was veering too far right, but fortunately the camera was in my hand and was pointed in such a way that it made for a half-decent video of the crossing anyway.

Text Post: DAY 54: UPON RETURNING TO ANGELA’S PLACE, I recounted the day’s story to Angela and her parents who thoroughly enjoyed it I think. Albert then said I was welcome to use his shop in the morning to make some small parts I needed to complete the repair work on my wagon. Albert didn’t have a welder but knew a neighbor who did and we called him and made arrangements to go there on the following day. Kip also stopped by just to make sure I had made it there safely. I pulled the wagon back into the barn and was thankful to God that I live in such a great land!