Thelma the Wayward Mule

Thelma and me

There’s one in every crowd—even a crowd of mules. I’m talking about that individual who marches to her own drummer—who says: I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.

I witnessed such an individual last week at the quail hunting plantation where I drive a wagon. The occasion was the annual meeting of the Georgia chapter of the Colonial Dames of America. The event was a historic preservation tour that brought them to view the plantation home designed by world famous architect, Edward Vason Jones.

It is worth noting that when hunting season ends on the last day of February, the animals take the summer off while the property managers are hard at work burning fields, clearing brush, and maintaining equipment. Since it is a private residence and a members-only facility, nobody comes on the property unless they have business there. When I arrived on the property last week, the horses and mules were grazing peacefully in their fifty acre pasture—peacefully, that is, until three large white tour busses followed by a small caravan of cars trundled down the dirt road in front of their pasture

I can only imagine what was going through their minds as the vehicles disgorged a hundred or so passengers. Maybe they thought all of these people came to see them—perhaps bringing food. It was quite a sight to see six mules and a dozen horses sprinting across the pasture to gather along the white wooden fence. It reminded me of when I was a kid and we heard the bells of the ice cream truck jingling through the neighborhood.

Thelma, looking for the way back to her pasture

I paid little notice, assuming that the guests would lose interest in a bunch of animals in favor of the historic house they had come to see. Imagine my surprise when I looked back and discovered that they had gathered around one of the mules who was grazing peacefully in the middle of the lawn. How had that happened? Had she jumped the fence? Not likely. Had someone left the gate open? Not according to a quick survey of the fence line.

The mule was one of the mules that pulls my wagon, my dependable pulling mule, Thelma. She gave me little trouble as I herded her back up the lane and through a gate that led back to the pasture. She even seemed—if I care to be anthropomorphic—glad to see me.

So, how did she get out? Well, that’s the interesting bit. According to several guests who witnessed it, when the other animals were trotting to the fence, Thelma separated herself and turned ninety degrees from the herd. She proceeded with purpose down the fence line away from the action and entered a grove of trees where the sturdy wooden fence becomes a tangle of metal posts and barbed wire—a section of fence that is apparently less than secure. Guests reported that when she emerged from the trees she was no longer in the pasture. She had decided to join the party.

How, I wonder, did she figure that out? How did she have the presence of mind to zig when the rest of the herd zagged? I can’t say, but it sure did make for some good theater. I wonder what made the greater impression on our guests from around the state, the architecture of Edward Vason Jones or the ingenuity of Thelma the wayward mule, who challenges us not to follow where the path may lead, but to go where there is no path and leave a trail.

A peaceful pace

Being the driver of a mule-drawn wagon on a quail hunting plantation affords me plenty of time to think. Sometimes my thoughts are directed toward the job at hand—the mules, the horses, the dogs, and the hunters—and sometimes my thoughts are drawn to the conversations behind me on the wagon—conversations that I treat as confidential. And then 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…”.

At the end of every hunt, we have a fifteen or twenty minute ride back to the house. The dogs are back in the wagon and the retriever is lying on the seat beside me as I follow the horse riders. The only sound is the conversation of the guests, the jingle of the mule harnesses, and the occasional bobwhite quail whistling in the tall grass. The pace is slow enough for a person to walk and I have never heard a guest complain about the length of our ride. In fact, people often remark on how peaceful it is and how they can feel their blood pressure going down.

Our wagon is like an old fashioned covered wagon with its heavy wooden body and tall, spoked (albeit rubber-tired) wheels. It is not a stretch to imagine a time when this type of transportation was the norm. My Grandma Porter told me of her grandparent’s trip from the Florida panhandle to Nacogdoches, Texas on a covered wagon in the mid-1800’s—a trip of about six hundred miles. Her grandmother walked the entire trip behind the wagon knitting socks for the men-folk. According to Google Maps, I could drive that trip in just under ten hours. My great, great grandma’s walk, at about three miles an hour, would probably have taken several months.

I wonder what it would be like for me to drive to work in the mornings on my wagon. 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. It would be like commuting from Albany to Atlanta—with no ITunes or satellite radio. With all of that time, I could solve a lot of the world’s problems.

The people who hunt with us are busy people. They spend plenty of time on their mobile phones making deals and staying in touch with their offices. I even had one guest suggest that we make the wagon a “mobile hotspot” so he would have better phone reception. But on the ride to the house at the end of the day, all that seems to change. The phones stay in their pockets as their conversations steer away from business and toward family, good times, and the beauty that surrounds them.

In his Zen Habits blog, author Leo Babauta offers us Ten Essential Rules for Slowing Down and Enjoying Life More. The first five are to do less, to be present, to disconnect, to focus on people, and to appreciate nature. That about covers the experience of spending twenty minutes on a mule wagon. It certainly gives me time to think 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”. I’ll let you know when I work out some answers. In the meantime, I think I’ll just sits.