Nothing's ever lost

A search for run-away burros and lost gear in the wilds of McCoy Gulch

It’d been about 10 months since the wild burros — Blue Rodeo and Roger — bolted during a training run at McCoy Gulch, on Fourth of July weekend as I recall.

They were running pretty well for the first couple miles. Then something spooked Blue and he went into overdrive. My friend Tracy, who is Roger’s owner, held onto his lead for a few more strides before she also had to throw the rope. Then it was off to the races.

Down the road they ran. Then up a hillside. After a run-around in a glade of piñon trees, they found the really wild country and I could only hear them crashing through the underbrush. At some point while gasping for air and charging up a near-vertical slope, I looked up and saw Roger at the top of the ridge. He spun around and the saddlebags he was wearing caught on some brush and flipped over the top of the saddle. In these saddlebags were my iPhone 6, a couple of good water bottles, and some other minor gear.

I made a mental note of the approximate spot and continued to scramble uphill through the high-desert jungle, ducking brush, climbing over rocks, grabbing onto branches to pull myself up, while also watching each step for the ever-present cactus and yucca, as well as the very real possibility of rattlesnakes.

That first evening I actually caught the burros. This was only because Roger hung up a rope on a boulder. I was able to unsaddle him and stash that gear, but while leading the burros back they blew up again and easily broke away. For the next three days we tracked them to where they drank from a hidden creek, through meadows and thickets, and up and down the rugged mountainsides. It was like tracking the ghosts of two wild burros. I really wondered if I’d ever see them again, as the possibility of getting caught by the rope once more was very real. But in all the tracking I did notice one consistency — they seemed to return to the parking area each night.

So that Sunday evening, after another futile day’s search, I drove back over there with Harrison, camping gear, my jenny F.T. Boogie and a bag of carrots. Harrison bunked in the back of the truck and I set up in the bed. Boogie was tied to the trailer with a bag of hay. Sometime around midnight I heard munching from the other side of the truck. I peered over the bed and there was Blue lit up by the moon. I climbed out of the truck and, thinking fast, gave Boogie the first carrot. When Blue heard her crunching he came over to check it out. I was able to offer him a carrot and then quickly grab the rope and tie him to the trailer. Roger wasn’t quite as easy to catch but he saw the jig was up and after some run-around I soon had him tied to the trailer as well. Not wanting to take any chances, I went ahead and loaded them all right into the trailer. I had the fleeting thought to just dive back into my sleeping bag, but instead started the truck and drove for home with loud protests emanating from the back seat about the camping trip being pre-empted. I told him he could “camp” in the truck back at home.

We arrived there around 2 a.m. and I unloaded the burros into the corral and tossed out some hay. When I’d finished doing this I looked the critters over and felt a sense of relief watching them eat. I turned around and found Harrison standing there barefoot, smiling at the burros eating, his white underwear glowing in the moonlight.

I was happy enough to have these wild burros home safely, but now the matter of the stashed saddle, and missing saddlebags was bothering me. A few weeks later I drove over and fetched the saddle. In the process I also looked for the saddlebags with no luck. What astonished me was again the sheer ruggedness of this country. Steep, covered In prickly vegetation, big rocks, some down timber, briars, dense oak brush and mountain mahogany. To move through this was not hiking, it was radical backcountry parkour.

A couple weeks later I went back over again on a mission to find them, and once again came up short. Then I got busy with coaching cross-country, then it was winter, and the lost saddlebags went the bottom of the priority list. I also had begun to wonder if someone may have found the saddlebags, but then what would anyone in their right mind wander through this God-forsaken area. It’s not a likely place for hunting — if you shot a deer there, you’d have to eat it on the spot. I’d also begun to question my own reminiscence of the day. Did I really see those saddlebags flip over there? Did I even make a good mental note of the spot? Did Roger possibly lose them before or after?

Lately with better weather, Harrison had been bugging me to go back and look for the saddlebags. Mostly he was interested in the phone. So one sunny Sunday we headed back to McCoy Gulch. As I turned off the highway I saw a small black object on the road and asked Harrison if he could see what it was as we drove past. He didn’t respond so I assumed it was just trash. We drove on to the four-wheel-drive road that offered the closest access to where I believed the saddlebags to be.

This time I planned ahead to bring rugged outerwear, hatchets and a macheté. Still the going was just as rough as I remembered it. As we made our way slowly up the ridge I thought about the futility of the search. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack when you don’t even know if there’s actually a needle in the haystack. When we got well above the place I thought the saddlebags should be, I decided we should turn back. I looked downslope and could see the truck, tiny in the distance below.

Going back down was much easier but with increased speed you really need to watch your step more closely. At one point I stopped and surveyed the next few steps through a patch of prickly pear. That’s when I saw the saddlebags — faded by the sun to the color of the surrounding landscape — out of the corner of my left eye. Excited by the find, we checked the saddlebags over and found everything still inside, then continued scrambling downhill. We’d been out for about 2 hours.

Back to the truck Harrison immediately plugged in the phone and soon it was charging — amazing since the device surely had withstood not only a beating but rain and snow, blazing hot summer days and below-freezing winter nights. 

When we reached the highway I looked out the window at the black object I’d seen on the way in. I quickly realized it was a wallet. So I got out and picked it up. The billfold was about 3/4-inch thick with plastic cards and had been laying along a busy road for who knows how long. I could see a Florida drivers license in the front, and it was this dude in the mugshot’s lucky day.

Instead of driving directly home with our recovered goods, we drove straight to the Custer County Sheriff Department and turned in the wallet. They said it shouldn’t be too hard to contact the owner. Nothing, it seems, is ever really lost.