A Ride of Passage in Mustang Country

At first I thought she was kidding. “Spend four unforgettable days reliving the Old West while you track wild horses.” Tracy, my friend of nearly 20 years, was on the phone reading from the UCLA Extension catalog about a horseback/camping adventure.

“Doesn’t that sound great?”

She wasn’t kidding--and she wanted company. More than that, she’d caught me in a vulnerable moment. It was the eve of my birthday, a big one, and she knew I’d need to prove something.

But camping and eight-hour trail rides? I’m a city girl. I fancy new manicures, fresh sheets with high thread count, sound plumbing, paved roads and good hygiene. Given the choice, I’d rather warm up by a fireplace than a campfire, and my idea of roughing it is a power failure.

But these are superficial concerns. What I’m really worried about is my personal safety. I’m a mother, and somehow to me that implies that I need to be responsible for my life. I can’t just go gallivanting after wild horses on a lark. What if I have an accident?

These are not Tracy’s concerns.

“Just think of those mustangs,” she says.

I picture them running wild, embodying grace, power and freedom and think maybe they have something to teach me. I think of my dad, who wanted to be a forest ranger but instead was an engineer and didn’t see nearly as much of the world as he wanted to, and my mother, who doesn’t travel. So do I want to stay within the confines of my secure world with an occasional hotel vacation, or break away? And what kind of example do I want to be for my girls?

The maverick in me wakes up.

“When do we ride?” I say.

Day One

“I don’t even try to cover all the risks because I’ll miss some,” says Craig London, a veterinarian and leader of this expedition, during our orientation breakfast in Bishop (a four-hour drive northeast from Los Angeles up highway 395). The group of 20 is listening closely as he delivers a few safety tips in a nonchalant fashion. London, 46, is tall and silver-haired, wears a mustache the size of a pocket comb and reminds me more than a little of Jack Palance’s character in “City Slickers.” With his father, Herbert London, he owns the nearby Rock Creek Packing Station, which has been leading the mustang trip since 1984. The trip is designed to raise public awareness of the herds, which are threatened by the federally protected mountain lion, Craig says.

“Before you drop your britches behind a bush, check around for rattlers,” he warns. “Check your boots for scorpions before sliding your feet in. When on your horse, stay aware. If you’re busy clicking a Kodak moment and a mountain lion jumps out, your horse will be off and you’ll be airborne. And watch out for Inmate, an unpredictable young mustang one of the crew members will be riding.”

Rattlers, scorpions, mountain lions, Inmate. I ask Tracy whether it’s too late to hit the High Desert spa.

The group ranges in age from 16 to 65; some have lots of riding experience, a few virtually none. I’ve done some English riding, which isn’t good to bring up around Western riders; it’s like telling an Irishman you understand his country because you’ve been to Scotland. When I see the group will split, I angle to go with the orthopedic surgeon, the physical therapist and the masseur.

“Anyone want to ride with a nonprofit manager,” one rider gamely offers.

Uhh, sorry.

From Bishop, we board a bus that takes us farther north to Benton, then off on a dirt road to what seems like an ideal place for a mass killing.

Our horses are waiting, patient and saddled. My horse is Packer, a dark bay Missouri Fox Trotter. Fox Trotters have a few strides most horses don’t. One is a level trot, not bouncy, which my backside appreciated from Day Two on.

We ride a few hours deeper into the wilderness to our new home, a base camp in lower Pizona, situated just below the elbow of the California-Nevada border in the Inyo National Forest. (Tracy assures me mass murderers wouldn’t advertise their trips in Extension catalogs, and I’m mildly reassured.)

We each toss our duffel in a tent to claim it and keep it from blowing off the land. Our belongings don’t amount to much. Mine weigh less than 30 pounds (our limit), including boots and bedroll. This in itself was a personal best. Normally, that would be just my cosmetic bag. But I’m learning how easily life can be pared to the essentials: sleeping bag, coffee mug, army knife, solar shower (essentially, a bag filled with sun-warmed water that you stand under).

I also learn that camping is a great leveler. The people on this trip couldn’t give a road apple what you do in the real world. The traits that count most are a sense of humor, a high threshold for discomfort, the ability to stay on your horse, a knack for telling good campfire stories and a willingness to share your Chapstick.

The wind is hot, dry and relentless. I look around at this oversized Windbreaker that will be my home for the next four days, take a deep breath and say what my mother says at such times: This too will pass. We’re thirsty, sweaty and dirty. I wish I had a cold bottle of Evian, but the only source of drinking water is the stream. I drink it with great hesitation, try to ignore the dirt particles and wonder if anyone brought giardiasis tablets. I skip the solar shower, which others are taking one by one behind a strung-up plastic tarp. It seems altogether too humiliating.

Soon my children will find the notes I tucked under their pillows. I tried to answer the good question Marissa, who’s 4 and my youngest, asked me: “Mom, if you’re going to miss us, why are you leaving?”

“Sometimes we have to do things that make us uncomfortable in order to grow. Even mommies need to grow,” I wrote. “There’s a whole world beyond our neighborhood and school that we need to learn about. When you’re older, you’ll come with me, but for now I’ll blaze the trail. Remember to floss, wear sunscreen and feed the dog.”

Day Two

At 5:30 a.m., a cowboy is outside our tent offering coffee. I fumble for my mug, realizing I had spit into it the night before while brushing my teeth. I’d rather have a nonfat double latte, but at least the coffee is hot--unlike the 40-degree morning air--gritty, blacker than boot heels, and mine has a minty aftertaste. Our horses leave in 45 minutes.

We pull on riding pants and long-sleeved shirts, and accessorize with sunscreen (SPF 48), a bandanna, gloves, bug repellent and a water bottle. I sacrifice vanity and replace my favorite shade of lipstick with a clear lip balm that contains a high SPF, though I still indulge in a little foundation and mascara. In debating whether to wear a hard hat to prevent a head injury or a broad-brimmed hat to prevent skin cancer, I opt for the hard hat.

We climb out of the tent into our little village. The 10 or so dome tents scattered throughout the clearing look like an alien landing. Our comrades soon emerge and make their way to the two dry toilets behind the shrubs. A few make fun of me as I carefully wipe yesterday’s dust off my boots. (I’d polished them to a high brown shine before I left.) Then I laugh, too, at my futile attempt at gracious living. Soon we’re tracking mustangs.

Mustangs are wild horses with no human-contrived bloodlines to boast of. Every year between the end of May and the middle of June, warm weather drives them to higher ground, specifically to this 40-square-mile area, with elevations ranging from 6,500 to 8,400 feet. Through this untrammeled wilderness--laced with natural springs and covered with waist-high sage and willow--we track.

Though I imagine these legendary animals spontaneously appearing as I lope effortlessly through the wilderness, the actual tracking process is a lot less romantic and involves detailed discussions of horse droppings. We learn to distinguish domestic horse droppings from wild horse droppings. And we soon can discriminate between hour-old, day-old and week-old leavings. Wild horse tracks differ from domestic horse tracks because the domestics wear shoes.

Four hours out, I’m feeling like the others: weary and doubtful. My rear hurts, my eyes burn, the skin on my face feels like toast, and my knees feel twice their age from being kinked into stirrups for hours. But my standards are relaxing: I drink the water in my bottle without hesitation but leave the last two inches, hoping that’s where most of the contamination has settled. Because my skin is getting torched--despite the sunscreen--I set a new low in equine fashion and crunch the hard hat on over my cowboy hat to protect against sun damage and concussion. And I abide by the group’s implied contract: No whining.

Though we still haven’t seen any wild horses, proof they exist is all around in the form of the stallion piles--the equine equivalent of men’s arm wrestling. Groups of male horses build stallion piles by putting all their dung in one heap, which actually seems rather tidy. Each horse’s droppings emit a male hormone, and one horse’s scent will beat out the rest, making him the studliest.

We climb to the top of a high hill with panoramic views of the Sierra Nevada mountains on one side, Boundary Peak on the other. Craig signals silence. Wild mustangs are grazing in the valley below. We dismount lower on the rise and tie our horses to sage bushes. Then we crouch and creep to watch.

We pick out the stallion, the cocky one. He’s a beautiful buckskin with a coat the color of coffee with heavy cream and a black mane and tail. The stallion, we learn, will always put himself between danger and the herd. The rest in the herd are his harem, in this case four mares. The herd’s alpha mare is a sleek chestnut with a foal. Like the female head of the house, she decides when the herd rests, moves and where they go to eat.

As we watch, the alpha mare moves the pack toward us. We stay low and quiet. We can’t hear them in the wind, but we trust they’ll come over the rise. Then we see the buckskin stallion come over the crest. He pauses grandly, facing us squarely with his ears forward. Then he squires his mares across our hill 20 feet from our crouching, awe-struck group. He runs parallel to the pack, between the herd and us. I can hear their drumming hooves and see their ribs shifting under their sleek sides, their long manes and tails blowing. Grace, power and freedom indeed. My heart is pounding, and I think this might be a visit from God.

When I get back to Packer, I wonder what he must think when he sees wild horses. Gelded and saddled with responsibility, he must long to be a stallion, running free with all those mares and with all his equipment. I climb in the saddle, then give him a big pat and say: “I know how you feel, pal. There’s a little wild horse in all of us.”

I’m so grateful I found mine. If I’d hung on to my ill-founded fears, look what I would have missed. It’s a lesson this alpha mare will take home.

After eight hours, six of them in the saddle, we return to camp, exhilarated, exhausted and so caked with sweat-dried dust that we all have black matter in the corners of our reddened eyes. I find dirt in places of my body that I never knew I had. I go for the shower but wear my bathing suit after noting the tarp’s tendency to flap open in the wind.

Day Three

I forgo all makeup. The foundation only accentuates the places where I’m peeling, and the mascara attracts dust. Besides, what’s the point of highlighting bloodshot eyes? I improve on the headgear by placing the hard hat over a more conforming baseball cap.

We ride at the break of dawn with Tom Allewelt, a seasoned packer and tracker who knows the area almost as well as the mustangs. Shortly after we start, Tom’s off his horse, feeling with bare hands the warmth of fresh horse leavings, and I’m laying odds he didn’t bring hand sanitizer.

Everything that hurt yesterday--seat, knees, eyes--hurts today, only sooner and more. I’ve got a bad case of hat head. I’m allergic to my bug repellent and don’t have one possession that’s not covered in dust.

Though we’re out for more than 10 hours--in the saddle for 8 1/2, if anyone’s counting--scaling steep hillsides and traversing miles of canyons, we see no wild horses. But by now we’re so chilled out no one minds. The camaraderie of the good-natured group, the beautiful vistas and the time with the animals are enough.

I’m at ease with the elements and have rediscovered my childhood habit of chewing grass blades. My boots are trashed, and I start to see that their distressed look has a certain cachet. I’m not just covered with dirt anymore, I’m one with it, and it’s almost Zenlike. Back at camp, I throw modesty to the wind and shower naked.

Around the campfire the cowboys tell stories. One explains that he doesn’t have a home by choice. He does packing trips and lives on ranches that can use him between here and Montana. I think about this a lot and try to imagine the virtues of not having a home. And I’m reminded again of how much I think I need but don’t.

Day Four

Craig talks briefly about wild mustang adoption and traits to look for in a packhorse, then dismisses us to pack our duffels to leave camp. But the group’s full of questions and wants to know about other trips. He talks about other excursions, including his favorite, the horse run. Every September he has to move 150 mules and horses from his packing station in Rock Creek to a ranch in Independence, Calif., 100 miles south. It’s a fast-moving trip, takes three to four days, he says. He takes 20 people he knows can ride.

“It’s rougher than this, but it’s a lot of fun.”

We hit the trail for our last day of tracking. Our route will lead us back to where we started. Along the way, we see another small herd of horses. They’re dancing among dust devils and run like the devil wind themselves as we approach. As I contrast them with our reined-in steeds, they seem like different animals. I wonder if once they’re captured and broken, they ever get their spirit back.

As we get to the end of our trail, I realize I’m going to miss this pared-down existence, the freedom of these open spaces, and my adaptable cohort of adventurers. I can’t help but think a little differently about all my responsibilities back home, the trappings of my everyday life, the fences I live within. I think from here on I’ll be traveling lighter, in many respects. And my girls? Well, they’d better be up for adventure.

I give Packer the apple from my lunch and one last good pat. On board the bus to Bishop, Tracy gets a funny look on her face.

“Hey,” she says, “what do you think about doing that horse run?”

Rock Creek Pack Station offers several wild mustang trips a year: one through UCLA Extension, one through UC Davis, one through Cal Poly Equine Outreach, and private excursions. For more information check the station’s Web site at https://www.rockcreekpackstation.com, or call (760) 935-4493.