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| 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.
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| 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.
