Chasing the Wilderness

By Gramma Smokey

These short stories are all true lifetime experiences and adventures, and I am grateful that I was able to have them. I want to take other on the trail with me in this book.From the age of twelve, I worked with a packhorse string in Southern California and later with my own string in the Pacific Northwest. I also worked with a fire ranger, and that's where I got the nickname "Smokey."When I wasn't working, I was back there, just enjoying the peace and quiet of the wilderness.Gramma Smokey

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886540475

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Chasing the Wilderness

Gramma Smokey

Copyright © 2022 Gramma Smokey

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 979-8-88654-046-8 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88654-047-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Last Trip to Lake Quinault and Back

Moondance

Pause

Ver 6, 10/07/2021

I wish to dedicate this book to my son, Sammy Lee, and to all the other disabled that for some reason or another, never have the opportunity to chase around the backcountry as I did.

Preface

When I first started the packhorse service, I was amused by the reaction of the customers when they realized that Smokey was a lady. I guess they expected some old guy in worn-out cowboy boots with a beard and a mouthful of chewing tobacco.

My life has been a series of adventures with horses, and I thought it might be nice to share them. Over the years, I wrote down these stories, and I have now tried to put them together into this book.

From my first ride with a neighbor girl on an old horse called Pete and my rides around the San Bernardino foothills to them working as an outrider for the Arrowhead Springs Resort, riding stable for several summers. We also did some packing around the Death Valley area.

Later when I was fifteen, I worked on the track, retraining racehorses into riding horses. I also was exercising the racehorses by racing them around the track every other day. But I soon returned to being an outrider.

In all my travels during one-horse camping, I was never afraid. I had an Appaloosa with me. This side species of the horse has a unique instinct to protect its person. But since all are not purebred, it has been somewhat diluted by crossbreeding to regular horses. Most horsemen are unaware of the ancient history of this equine, which evolved in the high Himalayan Mountains and were first captured by the Chinese where they were treasured.

The very first foundation thoroughbred racehorse was an Irish horse named Spotted Wonder. Since these spotted horses didn't have a breed name, they were crossed into the common horse and were not given a breed name until later in the 1700s when the Palouse Indians of Oregon recognized the superior traits and began to trade furs and hides to the Russian ships in the port of Portland for these horses. They were then thought of as the horses of the Palouse Indians, thus Appaloosa. There is a long history about them, but that is another story.

Poem

Traveling with horses can be a tricky show.

They don't always step where you want them to go.

They often cause trouble by trying to pass

Another animal that has paused to eat grass.

There are always those who drag along

And have to be pulled till something goes wrong;

Others will bite the next horse in line

Or kick at the one tied behind.

Then there are those who rub their packs

On every darn tree along their tracks.

There are always ones who will step on my toes,

Others who slug me with their nose.

Sometimes they use me for a scratching post,

Or chew on the saddles like a piece of toast.

The horse that gets me really mad

Is the one who tries to pass in a place that's bad.

They get real spooky from the wind in the trees,

And wow what a rodeo when we get into bees.

But I guess there's nothin' that can compare

To a string of horses that's just seen a bear.

A pack will usually slip about this time,

And naturally it's on the last horse in the line.

In order to fix it, you gotta get down,

Break 'em apart, and tie each clown.

If real lucky you happen to get,

It won't be raining so everything is wet.

When for hikers you must pause

A tangled mess they will cause.

If you try to water them one at a time

One will get a foot caught in their line.

Somewhere along the worst stretch of trail,

They'll get their rope under another's tail.

Just like a bunch of mischievous brats,

They are always into trouble behind your back.

Those who think my price is stiff

Should try to lead them along the edge of a cliff.

I'll tell you something you probably not know,

Packin' a string of horses is a tricky show.

No matter what, the love they give

Will soothe my soul as long as I live.

First chance I get, away I'll ride,

From this obsession I cannot hide.

As far back as I can remember, I was fascinated with horses. As a child, I always wished for a horse. In fact, my sister and my best friend, Judy Kemp, would take the mop and broom and pretend they were horses. We would ride them around the house and yard and pretend we were cowboys or Indians. I guess this seemed odd for little girls. Once when I was about four, my sister and I looked out the window of our upstairs apartment and saw a horse grazing on the lawn. We ran to Mama and Grandma, yelling, God sent us a horse! Since we ended every prayer with God, please send us a horse, we as small children thought he had done so. The disappointment was unbearable when we found out this animal had escaped from the freight train that ran near our house and two men came and led him away.

Shortly after that, we moved from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Southern California. My father, who had been overseas fighting in World War II, was transferred to Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino where he would later work on the NATO project. My father worked for the government for over forty years and received a presidential award for his work on NATO for the air force. I was sad to leave St. Paul and my friend, Judy Kemp, and I thought I would never see her again.

Back in 1944, few people had the luxury of a house phone. There were no TVs, but people had a radio and spent their evenings listening to it. Some people did have a car of some kind. Horses and wagons were still used but were being replaced by cars. Workhorses were still around and still used to doing most of the plowing. Most farmers could not afford a tractor.

It was a hot summer day in Southern California and dust from a breeze floated through the air. I walked down the side of the road that led to my friend's. I was six years old. My friend's family had an old workhorse that we would occasionally take out on the back roads and trail. I was hoping that Georgianna and I would be allowed to use the horse that day.

Her family's home was messy and dirty, and her father lay on the couch in an old undershirt and boxer shorts. He was listening to the radio and smoking a cigarette and drinking something. Georgianna asked him if we would take Old Pete and ride him around. The man waved his hand in approval, and we jogged out into the barn to catch the old horse up.

He was a good old workhorse and seemed glad to have the attention. He dropped his head for the bridle, and we led him over to the fence to climb the rails to slide onto his back. Our legs stuck out on both sides of him. We kicked a little to get him moving. Off we went… We followed a dusty road that led to an old orange dump. The orange packing houses dumped all the old and damaged oranges there. When we got there, we jumped off and began to sort through the mostly rotten and bruised oranges to find a couple we could eat. After finding several suitable oranges, we looked for a place to remount. As we rode along, getting sticky from the orange juice, we went down an old road we had not been on before.

After a while, the path crossed a small stream. Once again, we got off the horse to wash off the sticky orange juice from our hands and faces. But first we gave the rest of our oranges to Old Pete. We walked along the path seeking another place to once again climb on the old horse's back. As we walked, we began to get hot and tired, and it seemed we would never find a spot to get back on the old horse.

We soon spotted an old shack in the distance. There was a lot of junk piled around it. As we approached, an old dog began to bark at us. He was nearly hairless. A big black dog dragging a chain. A small girl, possibly a little younger than us, cracked open the door and stepped shyly onto the porch steps. She was barefoot with a mass of wild, blond curly hair. She was dressed only in dirty underpants.

We tried to get Old Pete over to a pile of old junk to get on. He was leery of the barking dog. Suddenly the door was flung open, and a hairy man without a shirt grabbed the girl's hair and pulled her back into the shack. We quickly scrambled to Old Pete's back, then urging him forward, we began to kick him into a trot.

The man yelled, Get off that horse! and started toward us.

We kicked more, and Old Pete now turned toward home, stepped into a fast trot. The man pursued us, demanding that we come back and get down. We, however, wanted nothing to do with him. He began to try to catch us, but we were having nothing of it. Georgianna turned Pete up through the brush as we bounced around on his back. We went up a small hill, and we began to lose sight of the man chasing us.

The man finally gave up, and we hurried home as quickly as possible. We tied Pete and ran into the house to tell her dad what had happened. Her older brother was there, and the two of them asked us exactly where it was that this had happened. They jumped into their old truck and took off. Soon they were back, and the sheriff showed up. Then they all left again.

Later I heard the grown-ups talking about how he had been hauled off to jail, and the little girl was returned to her family. I didn't fully understand what had happened; as I got older, I came to understand the incident better.

In the summer of 1943, I came down with polio. I recovered after a few months; I was one of the few that did. Polio left me with weak legs for a while, but plenty of exercise soon solved that. In those days, there were no telephones or radios in the hospital rooms. Television had not been invented yet, of course, and it was near the end of the war, and everything was in short supply. The nurse and my mother and grandmother taught me how to crochet, and that kept me busy. I have crocheted ever since and have mastered the craft long ago.

In 1945, we moved to a chicken ranch up the road. My parents bought this large old house, chickens with pens and all. It had three or four acres and some fruit trees. We took in an old blue roan gelding for boarding. My sister and I would ride him up the road a mile or two. It took well over an hour to get him that far. He dragged his feet and acted like he was very tired. But when we turned him around toward home, it only took about five minutes to get back. He ran as fast as he could. He would cut so close to the gate post at the beginning of the driveway, we had to lift our legs to keep our knees from getting bumped.

We moved to a new house north of San Bernardino in the late 1940s, near the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains.

My parents bought us a little bay horse we called Rusty. We all rode him, trading turns. Our neighbor, Mr. Dean, had a couple horses that he let us ride when we wanted to. I used to take a ride up through a huge vineyard nearby and then up into the foothills of the mountains. I was on a hill above the vineyard one day when I became aware of a small airplane that was having engine trouble. The aircraft sputtered and cut off. I could see it was going to crash in the vineyard. I decided to ride down there to see if I could help. By the time I got there, other people were coming to see what they could do. I tried not to get close as others were gathered about. I was standing off to one side and several other people were arriving. A woman and a couple of girls came over near me, and I could not believe my eyes! It was Judy Kemp and her mother and sister! We began to cry and hug each other. It had been pure coincidence. Judy's parents knew we were somewhere around San Bernardino, but it had been three years; and since they didn't stay in touch, they never expected to find us. Her father had been transferred there purely by coincidence. They lived only three blocks from us. Judy and I became good friends again and remained so for seventy years.

We began to ride Mr. Dean's horses around the foothills and mountains and had many great rides in the next few years. We were sad again when her father got transferred again, this time to Phoenix, Arizona. We vowed to stay in touch and see each other after that. So sometimes she came to spend the summer with us, and some summers I went to Phoenix on the Greyhound Bus for a week or two.

Most summers, Judy came to stay with us. I think mostly because we had access to the horses. We spent many summer days riding around the foothills, and sometimes we would take an old road up into the mountains where there was a creek. We discovered a place where it pooled up into a small pond. The ice-cold water felt good on a hot day. We would wear our shorts under our jeans and wade out into this pond. It was about twenty-five feet across and three feet deep. Yes, there were actually running creeks back then. It rained more often. California has dried up a lot in the past seventy years.

We wanted to camp overnight, but our parents would not let us. So we settled for our lunches on top of a big boulder or in a grassy meadow. We had to watch out for rattlesnakes. Many have been killed off now, but in those days, there were a lot of them.

One day when riding up in the hills, we ran across a house with many little sheds, where lots of dogs were imprisoned. We learned later that these poor little dogs were sold for experimental purposes to companies for testing products. I'm thankful that we now have organizations that protect dogs from such treatment.

We were checking out a new trail we found one hot summer day when we ran into a large string of riders on horseback. We moved aside to let them pass. As we watched, a little old lady came along leading a horse. She was small and older.

As she approached us, she said, Hi, girls. I've never bumped into you on this trail before. Are you from around here?

We explained where we came from. She said that she and her husband ran the stable over at the Arrowhead Springs Hotel and Resort, and these were all dudes from the hotel. There were hot springs at the hotel, and they did have a lot of guests. Sometimes movie stars came there to use the hot springs.

The old lady's name was Evie, and her husband was Ollie. I don't remember their last name if I ever did know it. Ollie was leading the string, and Evie was hovering behind, watching to make sure the horses were all behaving themselves. She invited us to come up to the stable and visit her and also to fall in behind because