Burro Bill and Me: A Memoir of Our Unusual Death Valley Love Story by Edna Calkins Price

Author:Edna Calkins Price
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY/Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Bondfire Books
Published: 2014-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

TRAVAILS WITH A DONKEY

In the depths of the Grand Canyon, September was a time of stifling summer heat, intensified by the sheer rocky walls on both sides. Yet directly above, on the wooded South Rim we would once more be in a world of approaching winter. It was imperative that we cross that high cold plateau before the snow fell, but it looked as though we had met our Waterloo in the steel suspension bridge, arching gracefully from precipice to precipice across the tumultuous Colorado. After all the hundreds of miles of desert, wasteland and forest behind us, were we now to be stopped by a man-made hazard?

For two weeks Bill had been struggling daily to get even one burro to set foot on the bridge. They had passed through every stage of rebellion known to burrodom and now the moment they found themselves at the end of terra firma and headed out across ‘the waters on the slender ribbon of steel, they automatically dropped to their haunches and prepared to withstand a prolonged siege. Bill had at last resorted to the use of a cruelly compelling slip-knot hackamore with its merciless pressure on nose and jaw. But even for this the burros found a defense, willing themselves into that peculiar cataleptic trance known as “sulling,” in which an animal is immune to all sensory perception—as deaf, dumb, blind, and oblivious to pain as any Hindu fakir on his bed of coals. It is the most exasperating thing a burroman has to endure and Bill was maddened to the point of hysteria.

“I’ll slit their fool throats and throw them over the cliff,” he cried, brandishing his hunting knife perilously close to big Blackie’s outstretched neck. “I’ll show them—we can walk out without them!”

“Well, you can’t show them much after they’re dead,” I argued reasonably. “I think the burros have their point in this battle. After all, they don’t understand engineering. They probably think the bridge will sag and dump them into the river. It’s the same thing as asking you to walk a tightrope across Niagara. I bet they think you are trying to make them jump into the river. You’re supposed to be a smart human—can’t you think of some way to outwit a few dumb burros?”

Bill considered, cooling perceptibly. “Well,” he said at last, “I have heard of blindfolding horses when they are frightened. It might work. Remember Old John used to lead any place, just so I went first? Come John, let’s try you.” And flipping out his red bandana, he folded and tied it over John’s wise old rheumy eyes.

“Now,” he said, patting John reassuringly, “you and I are going for a little April-Fool hike down the trail and up the trail, and when we hit that bridge again, I hope you don’t realize where you are until you are clear out in the middle of it.”

Down the trail they marched, Old John uncannily sure-footed, hard on Bill’s heels. Soon I saw them bobbing again up the steep winding trail from Bright Angel Creek to the edge of the precipice that joined the bridge.

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