The Horse Trip Part 1

Yay, my daddy wrote me a story from his life, i wish my parents could just write down every detail they remember from their entire lives. Too bad they weren't bloggers.

The horse trip began with some guy who heard that horses were cheap in Bolivia. I am not sure where he heard it maybe he had just watched "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". Any way he said it would be fun to travel to Bolivia buy some horses in the east and ride them across the mountains to the coast into Peru or Chile. I am not sure why the idea sounded so good but there were 5-6 or six people in the dorm including Jennifer Bates who liked the idea. Every body in the Dorm in Aspen in 1967 were transients. Some were skiers, some were just travelers looking for the next "in" place. Maybe every body had a secret dream to be a cowboy.

Anyway later in the winter the idea had changed to "lets go up to Montana buy some horses and ride them to California." Sounded much better. By summer everyone had backed out and decided to go to Nantucket or Drop City or back home to make some money. Except for me. I loaded up my VW with all the possessions I owned and headed for Montana Summer of 1967. It was a nice time when all I owned fit in a VW. Later at the next move from Central City it would be a pickup truck and a car. Later when I moved from Sandpoint it would be a Chevy Van.

I drove up through Yellowstone in April-very pretty. And went up to Missoula, Montana. There was a riding stable there where I rented some horses and asked about buying a horse for a trip into the Mountains. Somehow while I was there I met a girl who was from my old high school in Fairborn Ohio. She lived in Missoula with her husband who was also very nice and after telling him my plans to buy a horse and ride away, he offered to let me stay in their house. Shannon also mentioned that another friend of mine from Fairborn live nearby. His name was Paul Gordon who was the younger brother of Dow Gorden, who I was friends with in Fairborn. There was a Bar in Missoula called Eddie's Club that my new friend took me down to visit several times on the nights they sold schooners of beer for 25 cents.I kept asking people there about Paul Gorden and if they new where he lived. He was off the highway outside of Missoula and everyone kept saying -- he's not at Donovan Creek is he? the third time I heard this I asked who's at Donovan creek? And got the answer back-- oh someone started a Hippie Commune up there. So immediately I knew thats where he was. So I loaded up my VW and headed for Donovan Creek.

Eddie's Club was a wonderful Montana Bar. If you bought a man a schooner of beer he was obligated to tell you stories about life in Montana- ranching, the railroads until the scooner was empty. If you wanted to hear more you had to buy another schooner kind of like Scheherazade except it only cost another 25 cents. Several men had worked the railroads from Minnesota to Seattle. Knew stories about every section of line, every train wreck and every death, beheading , loss of limb and gory detail for the last 30 years. Old cowboys talked about cattle and rustling and Winnebago's fitted to haul cattle at night. Every story in the world about horses and bucking broncs and rodeos. No one could tell where the facts met the fantasy and after several more schooners no one cared.

So when I entered the gate at Donovan Creek- My story about buying a horse and riding to California became a free pass. Everyone would just stare and say Far Out. Would you like to stay a while. The commune was very nice about 22 people. The main building was a large kitchen and meeting room where every night the women would serve macrobiotic dinners of rice and lentils. The leader was a lady from California who had some money to buy the ranch and had ideas about having a commune which could support itself. So she had also purchased a large room sized Kodak printing , copier, publishing machine. Must have cost a fortune but the idea was to start a publishing business to support the commune. She also wanted to have horses there so I volunteered to clear out the barbed wire that was every where from old fences. I borrowed her pickup truck and some wire cutters and cut the wire into small pieces and bundled them together. After two days I had taken all the wire to the dump. She was real happy and offered to let me keep my horse there after I bought one. The next project was to build a sweat lodge next to Donovan Creek. The ranch had a real dense stand of lodge pole up on the ridge so we took the pickup up there to cut lodge poles. The stand was so dense you could hardly walk through it. the lodge pole were about 4" dia. and 20 ft high --perfect. We cut them at the ground and limbed them with an axe. soon we were dragging a whole mess of poles back to the creek. We formed them into a low tepee and started throwing on tarps and canvas cloth until the lodge was sealed tight. A bon fire was heating the river rocks while we built the sweat lodge. finally we all stripped and carried the hot rocks into the pit at the center of the tepee. then the leader started pouring ladles of water from a bucket onto the rocks. It was like hitting 20 naked people with a baseball bat we all headed for the deck. the heat was so intense no one could breath unless their nose was inches from the grass on the floor. Finally everyone just exploded out of the sweat lodge and headed for the cold mountain waters of Donovan creek. The rest of the day was in and out of the sweat lodge, the creek and laying in the grass. to be continued.