J.D. Porter's Blog, page 14

Lesson #1: Slow down and smell the manure

 

Sometime in the late 1800s, my Grandma Porter walked behind a covered wagon from the Florida panhandle to Nacogdoches, Texas—a journey of more than six hundred miles. According to Google Maps, I could drive that trip in just under ten hours. My grandma’s walk, at about three miles an hour, would have taken several months.

[image error]I often think about her journey as I drive my mule wagon at a quail hunting lodge near Albany, Georgia. It is similar to an old-fashioned covered wagon with its heavy wooden body and tall, spoked (albeit rubber-tired) wheels. Behind my driver’s seat is another bench seat that will accommodate two or three guests. Behind the guest seat is a large box or kennel that holds several pairs of hunting dogs. If my wagon did not have the guest seat and the dog box, it would hold a considerable amount of cargo. It is like a pickup truck that is powered by two mules instead of 400 horses.

I wonder what it would be like for me to drive to work in the mornings on the wagon instead of in my car. I would not need to worry about running into deer or hogs. I wouldn’t be checking my speedometer or gas gauge. Of course the drive would last about three hours instead of fifteen minutes—a three hour commute with only mules for company and no iTunes or satellite radio. With all of that time, I could solve a lot of the world’s problems.

 

In their heyday, mules were as common as trucks are today. As a young boy, my dad plowed his family farm behind a mule. Twenty-mule-teams hauled tons of Borax out of Death Valley, California. Mules dragged cannons across the Western Front in WW I and served as pack animals in the WW II Burma Campaign. On the home front, mules were used to pull wagons and farm implements until the 1930s, when they were replaced by motorized tractors and trucks.

Today, mules are more of a novelty. Everyone has heard the expression ‘stubborn as a mule’ but few people have spent time with them. In my time driving the mule wagon I have come to appreciate them for their strength, their patience, and their intelligence. As to their stubbornness, perhaps there is another way to view that trait.

When I am grooming the mules in the morning and one of the eight or ten horses at the hitching post wanders too near, I can easily push the horse out of my way. If my mules, on the other hand, are out of position and I want to move them, I not only can’t push them, they will push back. I get the impression they are not so much stubborn as they are opinionated. They just don’t like being told what to do. My wife is like that—but that is a discussion for another book.

 

For a wagon driver, the workday begins before sunrise after the horses and mules have been brought into the barn from the pasture. My first order of business is to grab the bridles from the tack room and see which stall my mules have wandered into—usually the last stall on the right (mules must be creatures of habit, too).

Since entering the fifteen foot by fifteen foot stall with a couple of one-thousand-pound animals can be challenging in the dim light of a pre-dawn morning, I carry a few mule treats in my pocket. That will usually lure them to the front of the stall where I can slip the bit into their mouths and tug their considerable ears through the headpieces. Once I buckle the chin straps and grab the leads, they will follow me out to the hitching post like a couple of dogs on their morning walk.

The amount of time spent brushing and grooming depends on which mules I am driving. Thelma and Louise have longer coats and required more effort to brush the dried mud, small twigs, and oak leaves out of their fur. Bert and Ernie, on the other hand, are a couple of short-haired grays and nothing seems to stick to them.

The harness for the mules comes in two parts. First, I fasten the padded leather collar around their necks. Then I toss the rest of the apparatus—fifty pounds of leather straps, metal buckles, and chains—over their backs. It takes a good ten minutes to stretch out the harness on the mule’s back; sort out the chains and straps; and get it buckled, strapped, and hooked into place. When hitched to the wagon, the mules are pulling from a hook under their collar fastened to the front tongue of the wagon and two chain traces running down each of their sides and fastened to the wagon at their rears.

My grandparents must have gone through a similar process every time they wanted to go somewhere. As for me, I’ve grown so lazy and so accustomed to my car’s keyless ignition that I get annoyed when I have to dig a key out of my pocket to drive a car. Patience, it seems is something of a lost art.

When they are in-harness and ready to pull, and I give the command to “gitty up”, Louise jerks forward to get the wagon started. That’s about the only work she does all day. The rest of the time, it is Thelma’s harness that is taut from pulling and it is Thelma that arrives back at the barn at the end of the day covered in sweat. Louise is as fresh as a vine-ripened tomato—no sweat, no heavy breathing, and eager to get out to the pasture for her evening graze.

[image error]Thelma

Thelma and Louise are about seventeen years old, which puts them in their prime in mule years. The mules on the other wagon are each twenty-seven and, with a life expectancy of around thirty years, are nearing the end of their wagon-pulling days. That is why we needed to break in some new mules—a couple of light gray, short-haired, seven-year-old males I call Bert and Ernie.

Bert works on my left and is the steady one—much like Thelma. Ernie, on the other hand, is skittish. When I first attempted to drive through the open wagon shed so I could park the wagon at the end of the day, he suspiciously eyed the coiled hose, the garbage can, and the pallet of supplies on our right side and eased to his left, pushing Bert out of line. I had to stop the wagon and have someone pull the mules forward and into position. One evening as we were driving in at the end of the day, we encountered a basketball-sized pile of Spanish moss lying in the middle of the road. The horses stepped over it without hesitation but Ernie saw it before I did and cocked his head, looking at it nervously. The nearer we got, the higher he raised his head until he began to push Bert to the left into the tall grass at the edge of the road. No amount of pressure on the reins could pull them back in line. Thankfully there were no trees or ditches in our new path and I was able to wrangle them back into the road when the “danger” was safely passed.

[image error]Bert

Bert and Ernie came in at different times so they are not a true pair of pulling mules that can work together—at least not yet. This is most evident when I ask them to “gitty up” and they pull sideways in different directions. If I am not careful, they will even begin to back up. Eventually, after a lot of persuasion on my part, one of them will jerk forward and another uncertain journey will begin.

There are times when I wonder if Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. had me in mind when he quipped, You will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.

 

There is a time near the end every hunt as we are ambling down some rutted dirt road following the dogs as they search for quail when one of the mules decides she needs to relieve herself. Mules can pee and poop while in harness and without breaking stride. Anyone who works around horses and mules knows that familiar and comforting aroma of fresh manure. It is not offensive like that of dogs and cats. It is sweet and earthy like fermented grass or freshly turned compost. It is the smell of life. According to English poet D. H. Lawrence, the fairest thing in nature, a flower, has its roots in earth and manure. Without manure, there would be no flowers to smell.

That aroma is usually fresh in my nostrils as the evening sun slants through the pine trees and we begin our twenty-minute ride back to the house. It is that end-of-day wagon ride that sets the tone of our entire hunt and makes the challenge of working with mules worthwhile. Cell phones are tucked in their pockets as our guests talk quietly behind me. The retriever is asleep with her head on my lap. And the squeaks of the wagon synchronize with the jingle of the mule harnesses to lull me into a stupor. I imagine that the blood pressure of everyone on the wagon goes down. This is when I have come to appreciate the laid-back lifestyle of an earlier era. This is what it means to slow down and smell the manure.

Five Rules Introduction – Part 2

The secret to living well and longer is to eat half, walk double, laugh triple, and love without measure.

Unattributed “Tibetan” proverb

 

[image error]The pace of our hunt is what many people would call painfully slow. It is dictated by the speed of a couple of mules pulling a wagon. Before the turn of the twentieth century, that pace—the speed that a grown person can walk—was the normal pace of everyday life. I enjoy the break from my supersonic, microwave, digital world while a pair of mules pulls me along the back roads of life. My job forces me to slow down and smell the manure. It is good for my soul and something too few people are able to appreciate.

As a wagon driver, when I am not wrestling a pair of obstinate mules, I spend most of my time watching the dogs—the pointers that race around looking for birds and the retriever that sits on my lap when she is not retrieving. Their joy for life and their ability to live in the moment is infectious and provides a lesson for humans. Perhaps we should spend less time worrying about the past and fearing the future. Somehow, we need to figure out how to just live in the present or, put another way, to seize the day.

My third observation is a lesson in how we should treat other people. I was raised in the south where children are taught that when they say Yes or No to a grown up, it had better be followed by Sir or Mam. It is so ingrained that I still find myself saying it to strangers to this day. When I pass someone on the street or meet someone in an elevator, I nod and say hello, whether I know the person or not. Anything else would be—well, just rude. So it is not such as stretch for those of us who work at the hunting lodge to treat our guests with respect. The world, I believe, would be a better place if we would focus more of our attention on the people around us.

When my wife and I visited Africa in the 1980’s, we were struck—and a little un-nerved—by the isolation. When we were on safari, we were truly disconnected from the world. Today, there are few places left on the planet that are not connected to the rest of the world, whether through cell phones, Wi-Fi, or the internet. When our friends recently traveled to Africa, they shared their experiences through social media—live from the Serengeti. I’m not sure I consider that progress. So while we are learning how to better focus on other people, we also need to learn how to put down our mobile devices and disconnect from our fast-paced, digital world on occasion.

The final observation is one that unfolds before me every day. It is the quiet thrill of sitting on my wagon and allowing the sights, smells, and sounds of the Georgia woods wash over me. Sometimes I wonder if we have lost the ability to appreciate nature for what it is.

So, there they are; five rules for living life in the slow lane. It sounds simple. Just slow down, unplug, and enjoy the day. But how do we do that in a world that has such a tight hold on us. In the coming weeks, we will look at each of these areas in a little more detail.

(Author’s NOTE: If you would like to receive a free, advance-review copy of the book Lessons from a Mule Wagon (Coming out later this year), leave a message at the contact page on my website.)

Lessons from a Mule Wagon: Five Rules for Living Life in the Slow Lane

[image error]I am not a hunter. It’s not that I disapprove; it’s just that shooting guns and killing animals is not my thing. I have, however, seen lions in Africa kill an antelope. It is a different experience in person than it is on television. It is more visceral, more intense, and it helped me realize that it is perfectly natural for one animal to die in order to feed another.

I grew up poor on the Gulf Coast of Florida where my Dad “hunted and killed” mullet with his cast-net in order to feed his family. In a rural economy, hunting is a way of life. That is why, after retiring from a forty-year career working with animals in zoos, I felt comfortable accepting a part-time job driving a mule wagon at a local quail hunting lodge.

During the hunting season, I spend my workdays managing a couple of draft-horse sized mules and handling a small English cocker spaniel that serves as a retriever. Most afternoons I sit with my feet propped up on the wagon, my hands firmly on the reins, and a dog standing in my lap waiting for her handler to call her name. I have watched vultures floating in a cloudless sky, felt the breeze as it rustles the pine trees before me, and listened for the call of bobwhite quail in the sea of broomsedge.

It is a job that affords me plenty of time to think. My attention is usually directed toward the job at hand—the mules, the horses, the dogs, and the hunters—and occasionally my thoughts are drawn to the conversations behind me on the wagon. But there are the long periods of quiet that remind me of the quote often attributed to Winnie the Pooh author, A. A. Milne: “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits…”.

Our operation takes pride in offering an experience that harkens to an earlier era. Instead of jeeps, we use horses and mule-drawn wagons. A typical hunting party consists of four guests, two on horseback and two on the wagon behind me, with a guide and his assistant leading the hunt. Six or eight English pointers are kenneled in the back of the wagon until it is time for them to find the birds.

It is a leisurely experience with a morning hunt, a couple of hours for lunch, followed by another hunt in the afternoon. We ride until the dogs point a covey, we stop to shoot birds when they are flushed, and once the birds are found and picked up we ride off in search of the next covey. The guests hunt in pairs, usually alternating between the two on horse-back shooting together then the two people on my wagon shooting.

As a wagon driver, I find myself in close contact with our guests and I meet some interesting folks. They are mostly business people hosting their friends, relatives, and clients—often working important deals in an intimate, relaxed setting. Some drive in from nearby cities in the southeast and some fly from far away—many on their private jets. Conversations on my wagon often include comments on our southern hospitality and I have lost count of the number of times I have heard a guest exclaiming “My gosh, this place is beautiful!” This is often followed by a description of comparable experiences hunting grouse in Scotland, waterfowl in Spain, and doves in Argentina. These folks can afford to be anywhere in the world and one of their favorite spots is a place of world-class beauty at a quail hunting lodge in South Georgia.

My experience on the mule wagon has given me time to sits and thinks about such things as how the dog handler controls the pointers with a whistle and a “whoa”, why the retriever races out to find a quail with such enthusiasm, and what—if anything—the mules are thinking about as they stand immobile awaiting my command to “gitty-up”.

It has also given me time to think about my own life and how I might incorporate some of the lessons learned from my hours on the wagon. I have written down the most salient points—points that I boiled down to five bits of advice. I believe they might be worth exploring in some detail in the coming Thursday Blogs. Next week—an overview.

Book Review

I just finished the book Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch. As a zoo director, a history buff, and a lover of all things English – you would think I would be drawn into a story about exotic animals that is set in 1850’s England. Actually I was prepared to be disappointed, since I am a bit of a cynic. I have written my own animal novel and I have discovered that the nuances of animal care and the ability to make accurate observations of animal behavior do not come easily. While, I must admit, it took me a while to be fully hooked on Jamrach’s Menagerie I did get well and truly hooked. This is, I believe a remarkable piece of writing.
I was enthralled with the spot-on descriptions of the impressive and diverse collection of animals in Mr. Jamrach the animal dealer’s shop, where young Jaffy Brown “grew light of mind from the gorgeous stench”. Who but an animal person would recognize that stench could be gorgeous?
Later, at sea, as Jaffy watched a recently harpooned whale die, he declared, “It was then I truly realized a whale is no more a fish than I am.” “So much strength dies slowly. We watched in awe, wordless. Ten minutes, fifteen, more. As she thrashed, she swam around in an ever dwindling gyre, and I begged her to die”.
And finally, I couldn't help but be impressed with Jaffy's observations of a recently captured Komodo dragon:
“His piggy little eyes watched me suspiciously, and not a movement more I got for the rest of the day.”
“Those eyes were no more stupid than a rock is stupid. In the worst throes if its madness, those ancient eyes had remained fixed as stars, brightly aware, receiving what befell with the clarity of a sage. All life and death the same, the same pain and feeding and fighting and dying. All of that was in the depths of the creature’s eyes. All that and all the wildness of his life. No, he was not stupid.” How do you write that unless you have spent time looking into the soul of a Komodo dragon?
At times lyrical and poetic and at times disturbing and evening repulsive, this is one of the few books on the list of those I wish to read again someday.Jamrach's Menagerie

Book ReviewS By Beverly Shaff, Docent, Seneca Park Zoo

Have a love for zoos, ever think about how a zoo becomes a zoo? This is a wonderfully
written story of The Dotson Park Zoo, a fictitious place but a story of one of the great American zoos. Flash back in time to a wrestling bear that kills a man in a bar-fight, a cobra in a baby carriage and chimpanzees and elephants living together in the same exhibit. Two dead bodies discovered, both murdered at the zoo. Fascinating history that gives you a new appreciation for zoos and some of the things that happen to make a zoo succeed! (Symbiosis, Journal of the Association of Zoo and Aquarium Docents, Vol. XXIV No. 3, Jul 2012)