Leona was a good mule. She was in a fabled minority in the pack station realm of mules, as she was a riding mule as well as a pack mule. She was also … well …
somewhat notional in nature. There was how Leona pictured her world, and there were the rest of us, who were wrong, of course.
Mules are worth a lot more than a horse in the eastern California High Sierra, and there are reasons for that. They usually live longer than a horse, they learn fast and never have to be shown twice, and they won’t jump off a 300-foot cliff just because a 40-foot pine tree sneaked up on them.
When they learn something, it’s learned. Period. This includes bad things as well as good things. It’s up to the packer to discover just what these atomic boogers are in the life of each mule and avoid them.
With Leona, it was one spot on the Kearsarge Pass trail between Kearsarge Meadow and Slim Lake. Yes, as I told every kid I packed in, it was named for me because of how good a cowboy I was. Some of them asked why Slim Lake was 200 yards long and only 20 feet wide, but you know kids.
But just at the top of the little divide there was Leona’s booger spot. There was a short piece of trail that was level and maybe five feet wide, which would have made it flatlands anywhere else.
Well, one night I was riding Leona and leading some horses and mules down that stretch of trail. Leona knew how to get back to the pack station, so I was just making sure UFOs didn’t hover and suck us up. We were good.
When we got to that little stretch of trail, close to midnight, I discovered, through pack station Braille, that three hikers had rolled their sleeping bags across the trail and sacked out. I didn’t become aware of this until Leona had walked straight over the first two. All three dozing backpackers then saw mules walking over them, jumped straight up, and mules began knocking hikers down like ten pins. It was beautiful.
Every time after that, if I was riding Leona, when she came to that spot, light or dark, she wouldn’t go through until she’d thoroughly blown nuclear snot all over it.
Mules are the greatest manmade animal.
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Brought to you by all the aging packers of the eastern High Sierra. Having cameras along sure would’ve been a plus.
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