Joanne Sherman’s column: The mule and I

I knew off the bat that Connie didn’t like me.

I get it. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and I’m okay with that. But Connie was an ass. Not technically, I guess, because a donkey is an ass, and Connie was a mule — a nasty, bitter, angry, mule who tried to murder me, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I met Connie on the last day of a Grand Canyon adventure vacation. Up to then, my riskiest adventure experience was riding in a teacup at Disney. So whatever possessed me? The brochure. The pictures looked like fun. Rafting down the Colorado, sleeping under the stars, then riding a gentle animal on a carved-out trail zig-zagging up the canyon wall.

The rafting part of the adventure was fun, and except for pin-ball bouncing through some white-water rapids, not much scarier than a spinning teacup. The trouble didn’t start until we were deposited on dry land at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Nowhere in the brochure did it warn, “You will then carry your 30-pound duffle bag a mile in desert heat.” I didn’t sign up for that. I don’t carry things. That’s why I had sons. And I sure couldn’t carry a 30-pound duffle, so I dragged it.

The straps cut into my hand and the weight was pulling my arm out of its socket and I hadn’t had a shower in three days so I was gritty and itchy and caked with red dirt and I had a headache because that desert sun never stops beating down on the top of your head, burning through your ugly, crusty $47 hat.

Fortunately, I discovered that by staying close behind my traveling companion I could rest my duffle on his. When he wheezed, “My bag feels twice as heavy as when I started,” I said, “Mine too.” At that point it was lie or perish, and I took the low road.

Eventually we met our trail guide who matched our group, by personality, with our mules. That’s how I got Connie. I thought mules were small, like ponies or donkeys. These mules were big, like horses. Except for Connie who was biggest — big as a Budweiser Clydesdale.

The trail out of the canyon is steep and narrow; just a winding 7 mile, 3-foot wide path carved out of rock. Our guide explained that some mules walk close to the canyon wall, but a few prefer the outer edge of the trail. “If you get a ledge-walker, never rein your mule away from the edge,” she emphasized  several times, looking straight at me. “They don’t like it when you do that.”

Of course, my new girlfriend Connie preferred the edge, and so close that with each step I could hear rocks skittle and cascade down into the abyss. It didn’t help that on the numerous occasions when Connie and I teetered at the brink of calamity, I could hear the rider behind me, safe on his wall-hugger gasp, “Oh my God! I thought you were going over that time, for sure.”

At our first rest stop — and there was no “area,” we just stopped on the narrow trail — the guide told us it was important, life-or-death, important, to reign the mule so its rump was against the wall, with its head hanging over the edge. This accomplishes two things: it rests your mule’s lungs while offering the rider an opportunity to gauge the depths they will plummet if, and/or when, they go over the side.

“We’ve only lost one mule,” the guide said, but didn’t answer the second part of my questions, which was, “What happened to the rider?” However, she confirmed what I suspected from the get-go. I had been incorrectly matched with an ornery mule who had a dysfunctional personality, a bad attitude and who nipped other mules, just for the fun of it. 

“Connie has PMS,” the trail guide informed me, adding, “Just give her a hard smack with the riding crop.” Oh, sure. Put me on the back of a  mule with hormone problems and then tell me to hit her with a stick.

If that crop even twitched in my hand, Connie would snap her head around and shoot me a warning look: “Go ahead, honey, make my day.” I chose to not.

Connie and I were together for the longest four hours of my life, and that includes Hurricane Bob and labor during childbirth. But afterward, dismounted and a mile higher than where we started, I felt a sense of accomplishment, a surge of pride and that high daredevils talk about when they’ve teetered at the edge of death, but survived.

And now, because of that remarkable, memorable experience, when offered a choice, I go for the teacups.