Sense and Sensibility

As much as we all love the mountains, ocean, canyons, those majestic scapes that short circuit our wiring and take all the hype when it comes to the superiority of one place over another, there is much to be said for the "forgotten" places, mocked as being pancake flat, devoid of redeeming outdoor qualities. It just ain't so. I love the midwest and I love the fact that we're the underdogs, yet still have a damn good time mocking and flouting those seemingly more geographically blessed elitists. This article illustrates the point. And it has mules.

By: Randy White

Those who know the thrill of a food chase wouldn't dare call this flyover country.
On a night when much interaction with dogs and raccoons was anticipated, Shane Groves and his buddy Vandardis Black took the time to explain to me why it was necessary that other creatures be involved, namely two animals that were referred to as mules but in fact resembled mutant peccaries. "There they are," Shane said, pointing. "You ever ridden anything like them before?"
Nope. I'd never ridden anything like them before. It was possible that I'd never even seen anything like them before--hard to tell, because visibility wasn't good. It was the darkest sort of night in the northwest corner of Ohio, with starlight rattling through the corn stubble.
"You won't regret it," Shane told me. He meant having a mule to ride. "Out there in the woods, chasing those dogs through the briars and trees, you'll be real happy about having a mule."
I was unconvinced. Chasing dogs through briars and trees seemed diversion enough.
We were at the T. L. Brown farm on County Road 0, just southeast of the village of Pioneer and not too far from Kunkle, which is west of Aldvordton but well north of Hicksville. From the vantage point of an air corridor 30,000 feet above, this region would appear as an expanding darkness interspersed by the frail colonies of light that mark the night strongholds of human existence in rural places. It's what certain hotshot types in New York and L.A. refer to as "flyover country"--a term that trivializes the Midwest while insinuating a superiority that no Midwesterner who has ever been to New York or L.A. takes seriously. That term, and all that it implies, was one of the reasons I was now standing at the corral gate of the T. L. Brown farm, peering through the gloom at what appeared to be several elephant-size horses, among which stood the two mutant peccaries.
"Are those Clydesdales?" I asked.
Shane, a junior at North Central High in Pioneer, was busy gathering ropes and harnesses. "I already told you. They're mules." Clearly, the kid was focused on his quarry and assumed that I was too.
"Not the little ones," I said. "The really big ones."
"Huh? Those aren't Clydesdales. Those are Belgians. They're draft horses. We take them around to fairs and enter them in pulling contests. We got one can pull a 4,500-pound sled. It's what we do when we're not busy coon huntin'. Or running our snowmobiles. But those Belgians, they wouldn't be any good at all at chasing dogs. Dog makes one wrong step--squish. Heck, if we make a wrong step--squish!"
I found his reply heartening. For one thing, it meant that I wouldn't have to try to climb aboard one of those monster animals. It also seemed to validate the theory that had brought me to Pioneer, Ohio, in the first place. It was my belief that no matter where one happened to land in flyover country, a visitor would find that high-energy people were busy doing interesting things in outdoor places that might not be as photogenic as Aspen or as exotic as Maui but were just as significant in terms of interaction with nature, not to mention kick-butt fun.
"Hold the gate while we catch Sass and Tom."
Shane and Vandardis untethered the mules and led them out. When distanced from the draft horses, the mules seemed to grow in stature until they at last assumed the appearance of things found on a farm rather than in the Amazon. Not that they were classic representatives of the breed. Sass looked as if the DNA helix of more than one foul-tempered pony were clogging his gene pool. Tom was much bigger and had glazed, surly eyes, as if he were nursing some age-old grudge.
"You want to help load these mules?" Vandardis asked.
No, I didn't want to help load these mules. It was my guess that both animals bit like dogs. But I helped anyway, pushing, pulling, and leveraging Tom and Sass into the horse trailer while Shane reviewed our plans for the evening. After we loaded the mules and the dogs, he said, we'd drive back into Pioneer to pick up lights and gear, and then we'd trailer the animals across into Michigan, where he and Vandardis knew of a woods loaded with raccoons.
"The kind of place that coon huntin's all about," Shane said. According to Shane, we would loose the dogs in a likely spot and then stand around beneath the stars and listen to the barks. From the inflection of their yapping, Shane and Vandardis would know when the dogs were on the trail, when the dogs were closing in on a coon, and when the dogs had a coon treed. That's when we would leap upon the mules and ride pell-mell through the briars and the trees.
"Then you shoot the raccoon?" I asked.
Shane seemed mildly surprised by the question, but the kid was a diplomat. "Well, we could shoot them. Yeah, I suppose we could. But we won't, because that would make just one less coon for the next time we go out, right? No, the reason we're doing what we're doing is to work the dogs. Train them how to track coons. The dogs love it, the mules don't seem to mind, and I'm beginning to think the coons get a kick out of it too. Don't they, Vandardis?"
Vandardis Black was nodding. "The way they look down when the dogs have them treed, it's like, 'Hey, we'll get even. Leave your trash out and you'll be sorry.' Or, 'We know where your sweet corn lives.'"
"It's like that," Shane said to me. "Understand?"
I was beginning to.
"See, we enter the dogs in coon dog trials. Take them all over the place. When we're not pulling the Belgians at fairs. Or running our snowmobiles. Or fishing. Like I told you. You're about to have the wildest time of your life. Running dogs through the woods at night on mule-back is pretty much a guaranteed good time."
I was beginning to understand that, too.
Truth is, I'd been having a very good time ever since my rental car and I had left the dinge of Detroit International Airport and escaped south into flyover country. The village of Pioneer, just two miles beyond the Michigan state line and only 15 miles from Indiana, seemed an ideal destination. I liked the implications of its name. Also, because it was wedged between two other flyover states, it had a geographical resonance that suggested wider representation. It might be any small town between Nebraska and Pennsylvania. If Pioneer's thousand-plus residents were out there having fun, hip-deep in nature and God knows what else, then there was no reason for the Midwest to warrant indifference, let alone play ugly stepchild to every recreational glamour attraction from sea to shining sea. I was in an investigatory frame of mind.
I crossed the state line onto Ohio 15, and Pioneer emerged from a gray horizon: winterized houses, water tower, old brick buildings, a solitary traffic light. To my right was Hometown Hardware; to my left was Sooz's Restaurant, which was just across from the one-room library. I tracked down Pioneer's mayor, Alan Fiser, who also runs the local bank. "This is a solid, progressive little town," he told me. "You won't find a better place to raise children. Everything revolves around our kids. If you want to find active people, stop at the high school."
North Central High was set among elms and maples on Baubice Street. The mayor was mayor for a reason. He knew his town. In a school of 800 students, nearly every teacher I met had an enthusiastic outdoor agenda, and the kids were usually included.
Did I want to do a cross-country run? Did I want to drive out to Lake La Su An and go fly-fishing? And what about mountain biking? The county had no mountains, but there were plenty of big tractor trails to ride.
But it was school librarian Sherry Shipley, a take-charge woman, who helped fix my itinerary. Shipley is one of those people who sweeps bystanders along by force of enthusiasm, and those who tarry are grabbed by the arm and yanked. Shipley grabbed my arm and yanked more than once. What I might want to do, she told me, was go coon hunting with some of the students. And since the students hunted raccoons at night, what I could do is spend the day on a canoe exploratory with her husband, Tom."With all the creeks and rivers in this county," she said, "a lot of people are saying we need a canoe trail. Maybe you guys can find a good stretch and get it started."
We guys had our orders. I met Tom the next afternoon and followed his gray pickup to a spot on the St. Joseph River where we left his canoe before dropping his truck a few miles away. I guessed we could paddle the distance in 40 or 50 minutes. It took us three hours.
The St. Joseph is a narrow farm river, not unlike hundreds of others that flow across the Midwest. Its headwaters are in Michigan, and it runs southwest into Indiana, where it joins the St. Marys and Maumee Rivers. Not that Tom and I paddled to Indiana. I count myself lucky that we made it to his truck.
We put in near a county road bridge and almost immediately had to get out and portage around a barrier of fallen trees. It was the first of many portages. We humped the canoe over trees, under trees, and up the steep bank dozens of times.Even so, it was a great paddle. The river was seldom more than 30 feet wide, and yet it had cut a deep vein through the earth. There was a subterranean feel to the thing as we followed it through soft switchbacks, tunneling under sycamores and poplars. The current was so sluggish that it was illustrated only by snags, and more than once Tom said, "Here comes another Class I rapid!"
I liked the fact that the river created the back boundary of farms. On a portage, I could look across plains of soybeans or corn and watch people doing chores, futzing with tractors, going about their lives as we moved past--silently, anonymously.
What I liked best, though, was that the river was a magnet for all kinds of wildlife. We seldom rounded a bend that we didn't flush wood ducks or quail. The bank was always a mire of deer tracks, and high above, Canada geese compassed their way southward, traveling faster than us, faster than I wanted to travel. With just a little work, the St. Joe would afford a beautiful canoe trail.
By the time we got to the truck, it was dusk down on the river, although the outer world retained an hour of daylight. As we hauled the canoe out, Tom said, "Man, I bet you're pooped. And you still have to go coon hunting!"
On the bright side, I'd conserved precious energy by declining invitations to bike tractor trails and to run cross-country through the woods. Besides, how demanding could coon hunting be?
"I'd rather have my son hanging around an oak tree than an oak bar." Shane's father, Mike Groves, told me that while we collected gear from his store, Tri-State Coon Hunters Supply, on Ohio 15 just south of Pioneer. The store was a marvel of esoteric goods and equipage. There were Nite Stalker lights and Quick Trac ten-channel dog-locator systems, stacked bags of Happy Hound dog food, and a rack of more than 220 outdoor videos, including Raging Boars, Panfish Power, and Corn Crazed White Tails.Groves was replying to my observation that not many American fathers would willingly give their 16-year-old sons the truck keys along with permission to stay out until 4 a.m. "Shane's a good kid," Mike said. "He's been hunting the dogs in competitions since he was nine. He's never given me a reason not to trust him."
This was after Shane, Vandardis, and I had loaded the mules but before we loaded the dogs and drove north into Michigan, where the night seemed to contract as it grew darker. We parked in what appeared to be a tractor lane on the east side of a place that Vandardis called the Miller's Section. "Lots of coons here," Shane said, shutting off the truck. "Let's get the mules unloaded. Then we'll cut the dogs loose."
It was no easier to unload the mules than it was to load them. If we pushed, they pulled. If we prodded, they balked. "Darn mules!" Shane yelled at one point. "You don't change your attitudes, I'll leave you back in the barn next time!"
The mules must have understood, because neither their attitudes nor their behavior changed.
In contrast, the dogs knew exactly what they were supposed to do, and they did it with hyperactive enthusiasm. There were two: Toby, a registered redbone, and Suzie, a black and tan. Both hit the ground running, noses to the earth, and disappeared into the woods.
"Now's when the fun starts," Shane told me.
"Yeah," said Vandardis. "Listening to the dogs. It's nice."
The three of us moved away from the truck and sat on the ground. The mules cropped grass nearby. It was a moonless night, no lights anywhere around, and you could peer up into space. While I looked at stars and listened to the hooting of owls, Shane kept me informed about the dogs. He could tell what was happening by the sound of their voices. "They're just casting now," he said. "Hear them? When they get on a track, they'll let out a locate. The Toby dog will let go with a bawl, then roll it over into a hard chop."
A bawl, he told me, was like a wail; a chop was a series of barks. "Suzie's a good recreational dog," he said, "but it's Toby that will find the line. You wait and see. That Toby dog, he's a registered night champion, through the United Kennel Club. He's a world-class dog worth maybe $4,000, and he always takes the lead. Hear 'im now? Hear the bawl? He's on track. They'll have a coon treed soon."
The two dogs did have distinctive voices. But I was more interested in the voices of Shane and Vandardis. I listened to them talk about kids at school and their teachers, then about the coming winter and what the ice fishing would be like. Mostly, though, they spoke of coon hunting and their favorite woods and events that made them laugh and some that didn't, like the night a good three-year-old walker dog, Ringo, crawled out of a swamp soaking wet, touched an electric fence, and was killed.
"That was a shame," Vandardis said. "That Ringo dog was pretty good, too."
"Yeah, a good dog," Shane said, although the silence that remained seemed to add, But not as good as Toby.
"Hey, he's got one treed!"
It was Toby, of course. The dog's hard bark had become a distant howl that echoed through the woods. "Grab yourself a mule and let's get over there before he tears the tree apart!"
Shane took off sprinting into the woods. Vandardis swung onto the largest mule, Tom, which left me alone with Sass, whose withers came roughly to my navel. I threw a leg over the animal and immediately fell off the other side. I tried again--and fell again. I heard Shane yell over his shoulder, "Behave, Sass!"
Sass wouldn't behave. He had a nasty trick of faking one direction, quickly turning another, and then eyeing me with supreme contempt as I landed--thud--on the ground. When I finally did get mounted, the animal began to plod south, back toward Ohio. I wanted to go west, into the woods.
"Give him a whack!"
I'm not sure if it was Shane or Vandardis who was yelling advice, but I didn't hesitate to take it. I whacked, and Sass ran with a vengeance--ran me deep into the woods, dodging trees that I couldn't see, under branches that I saw too late, bouncing me along as something inside my diaphragm made a ludicrous ohoof-ohoof-ohoof noise that refused to silence itself until a tree limb nearly decapitated me, then launched me butt-first to the ground.
"See the coon?"
Yes. I had dismounted at precisely the right time. In the high limbs of a tree, frozen in the beam of Vandardis's light, were the golden eyes of a big raccoon. The animal didn't appear frightened. Indeed, the gleam in its eyes suggested that it was another Sass, the evil mule's soulmate.
"Good dog! Good Toby!" Shane was congratulating his night champion. He had no way of knowing it, but this, his favorite dog, would soon be killed by a car on a fast country highway under circumstances that would cause even Shane's father to weep like a child.
But that was a month away.
"Told you this was a wild sport!" Shane was talking to me as I peered up into the bare trees and the midwestern night beyond.
I was looking for a jetliner that would inevitably fly over, thinking: "You people don't know what you're missing."

Ishmael and Tao

My translation of the "Tao Te Ching" plays with an interesting historical theory in the introduction, that is to say the notion of traditional tribal societies vs. modern coercive societies. Much of the text ran parallel to ideas expressed in Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael," a book I first read in the late 90's

Much of Quinn's thesis centers around man settling in the Mesopotamian valley 10,000 or so years ago, establishing for the first time effective sedentary agriculture and the rise of "complex" societal structures, transitioning away from communialism and towards organized economies based on production and division of labor. The seeds of all modern modes of being.

Within the Taoist context lies a perspective which addresses these two main epochs of human history, breaking them into Yin and Yang epochs. Yin epoch dominated from two million to five million years of hominid, horde, and clan life that could be defined as communal living in Taoist balance, or what is known as the "Great Integrity." This was a period of "right-brained," intuitive activity (emotional, aesthetic, kinesthetic, holistic, integrated).

The requisite Yang epoch of the past few thousand years is defined largely by coercive civilizations, and a left-brained dominance of analytical reasoning (re: logic, structure, intellectuality, aggression.)

Both Quinn and Taoist thought may place us presently in an era when social pathology and technology are leading very rapidly toward an end to "civilization," a non-sustainable pattern of human existence entrenched as the paradigm on which human life is constructed.

It isn't hard to tease out these historical realities. To my way of thinking, tribalism and modernism are at war, both philosophically and in some cases literally, in our times. But where from here.

Taoist philosophy may encourage the possibility of a new phase or "integrated planetary community." It sounds hokey, yet achieving sustainability may be imperative, indeed, perhaps the only way we'll regain balance. All indications show that we've become collectively removed from the Great Integrity and done tremendous harm by shifting from balance to selfishness. Incorporating right-brain centered consciousness integrated with the positive aspects of the left-brain.

Most importantly, at the risk of sounding cheesy, is the notion of re-harmonizing with the natural world that we are an interconnected part of, whether we acknowledge that fact or not, it is inescapable, and additionally transcending the habits of the second epoch and discovering new forms of living that facilitate centeredness rather than division and conflict.

Can it work? It can. Will it. I'm a cynic and generally not inclined to see postmodern societies as open to possibilities, but systems do change, they changed in anceint Mesopotamia, they can change into a better way for humanity. It may take 100, 1000, or 10,000 more years, but the way of Yin, of the integrity is ultimately sustainable while we inhabit this mortal coil. As Ishmael shows us, the way of Yang most probably is not.

Starry Night Records

I've always been a man with a vinyl fetish. Once upon a time I acted on it. Since that time the band Park has blown up into a popular emo act. My little record is now a collectible. I hastened to put up info on the record and its story.

Here: http://starrynightrecords.blogspot.com

Pack Burro Racing

Someone on the ultralist posted a link to the pack burro race in Fairplay, CO. Not actually riding the burros, but running with the animals 29 miles up to the pass and back into town. I harbor untold desires to keep a couple of mules at the farm. My grandfather used to keep horses and mules out there and a former tenant had a couple he would use to go trapping, so I have the facilities. As it stands, kids, dogs, other stuff take my time, but when I have the time to devote, I'm gonna work with and train a mule. If you put the effort in, they are outstanding trail animals. I gotta do this:

http://www.packburroracing.com/


"Although Pack Burro Racing has existed in Colorado since the 40s, it's still a homegrown sport that has happily avoided exploitation. While some believe the history of the race dates back to Rocky Mountain miners who would race down from the hills to stake a claim at the local courthouse, the truth is that it's just a revenue scheme thunk-up by town do-gooders. Yet, it is a tribute to the spirit of the west -- man and beast coming together to conquer the rugged terrain.
Pack burro racing rules state that each animal must carry a miner's pack containing a pick, a shovel, and a gold pan. The total weight must be at least 35 pounds, which is often achieved by packing saddlebags with rocks and sand. A rope no longer than fifteen feet must connect each racer to his/her burro. And finally, the runner must have control of the burro throughout the duration of the race.
Often called the "poor man's PGA circuit," there are seven races that take place primarily in Colorado with one in New Mexico and one in Arizona. Races are run annually between April and August. And each town runs their race differently. Distances range from 10-29 miles. Purses range from $1,000 - $5,000 for the winners alone. In other words, a hot racer can turn a pretty penny following the circuit.
The race in Fairplay, which is just a part of their Burro Days celebration every July, is billed at the planet's "highest, longest, roughest, and toughest." Racers run 29 miles, climbing 3,000 feet. (Fairplay, population 500, is already at 10,000 feet.) 52-year old Curtis Imrie is a two-time World Champion, missing only one of the seven annual races in the last 26 years. "It's arguably the toughest sport in the world," he says. "Mostly because of the beast. And I'm not just talking about the donkey. I'm talking about the beast within." He trains year round, adhering to a strict seafood diet, plus putting in 40-60 mountain miles of training in every week. The New York Marathon? It's child's play to Imrie. He says, "We have world class runners that always come out and think they can pick up a little extra cash while training. We just laugh at them." While marathoners believe you should take a day off for every mile you run, pack burro racers can't afford the luxury. They can put in over 130 miles in a 90-day period.
Not only is Imrie a champion racer, but he's probably the sport's biggest supporter. (He's also a writer, filmmaker, and politician.) On a ranch in Buena Vista, he owns 50 burros, some of which are a new hybrid breed he created solely for the sport. He likens his burros to dogs and cats. "They bond with you every bit as much," he says. "They are so much smarter than horses. I think of them like having a four-year old child around." But aren't burros notoriously stubborn? That's a myth that Imrie is devoted to dispelling. "Cautious is a better word," he says.
If you're interested in racing, Imrie rents his mules by the season or by the race, which means any would-be racer from New York to California can have a well-schooled burro awaiting their arrival. He suggests that you start out at the race in Leadville, CO, which is a 21-mile runner-friendly race. "

An Actual Winter

That appears to be what we have this year, despite cries of el nino. Went out to Farmdale on Saturday and put in 3 hrs. 45 min., doing alt creekside, to playground, around to Schroll's. The body acclimates a bit to the harsh cold, temps were somewhere between 6 and 9 the entire run, a pattern that we've been locked in for several weeks.

Pam ran the first hour plus with me. Playground was entirely fresh snow, no tracks of any kind, meaning an extra effort in "breaking trail," getting confused with the numerous deer trails on alt. creek, and getting wet feet over the crossing.

Ran into Dave Tapp, etc. after an hour and a half and ran a bit with them until my slow pace left me alone again. A solid training run, the feets did ok.

Ah, Presidents Day. Whatever. I'll take the day off. 32, heat wave, took the 4-wheeler out in the now soggy snow with Zoe, over the creek, frozen I'd say three inches or so. More snow forecast tonight, 6-8 inches and wind. Let it come down.

Reading List:

"The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King," the true story of Billionaire Andy Beal's attempt to play high stakes with the best poker players in the world.

"A Fighter's Heart" by Sam Sheridan. Good read. The author is a serious fighter who trains in various disciplines: MMA, Muai Thai, boxing, Jiu Jitsu, all over the world. Very worthwhile, although the last two chapters about dogfighting and being on a movie set with MMA fighters don't seem to fit the whole.

Andrew Dean

Welcome to the world, Andrew Dean Zimmerman. Born January 26, 2007 at 10:01 p.m.

Wow.