Running with Sherman Read online

The basics, Ken explained, couldn’t be more basic: You can use any size burro, from a mini to a Mammoth, but no mules! (Mules are half horse.) You and your burro run up the side of a mountain and back down again, in this case for a total of twenty-six miles. You can’t ride, and your burro has to carry a thirty-three-pound packsaddle with a prospector’s traditional tools: a pan, shovel, and pick. If your burro busts loose, you have to catch it and bring it back to where you lost it before you can continue racing. That can add miles to your day if you’re running with an “uncut Jack”—a sexually active male, which will be fast and strong but prone to nuttiness. Jacks are known for fighting, bolting after female burros, or just smelling something weird and tearing off into the woods.

  * * *

  —

  “Hey ya, Hal!” Ken shouted to a lean, sun-browned guy wearing battered old Carhartts and stepping out of a pickup. To me, he said, “That’s Hal Walter. Very tough. Very smart. Always has a really good animal.” Hal was so good, he turned pro. The sport boomed for a while in the 1980s, with enough small towns in Colorado and Arizona hosting races that Hal could barnstorm the back roads with his burro in a trailer and make a living off his prize money. We walked over to say hi, but Hal seemed a million miles away. He barely made eye contact, looking past us and mumbling something about snowballs before wandering off.

  “Is there still snow on the trail?” I asked.

  “He means ‘Sobal,’ ” Ken explained as we walked on. “He’s wondering if Tom Sobal is here. Tom’s one of the few guys who can put Hal away.” Hal is ordinarily a friendly guy who loves to talk burros, Ken said, but even though he’s one of the greatest champions in the sport, he still gets jittery before a race. “Don’t let it throw you,” Ken advised.

  We reached Ken’s trailer, and he threw open the back doors. He whistled, and two eager burros trotted out. Ken tied them to a Stop sign, then went back to the trailer. Deep inside, something was still thumping around. Ken whistled again, then cursed. “Time for the Persuader,” he said. He pulled a two-by-four from his pickup truck and slid it through the trailer’s side slats, leaning back hard as he tried sproinging the last animal out using a fulcrum and lever. Nope.

  Ken recruited two spectators, then another, until five of us with a combined body weight of half a ton were hauling on the burro’s rope in a tug-of-war. No dice. Pissed off now, Ken hitched the rope to his pickup and threw it into four-wheel drive. One balking step at a time, a nearly six-foot donkey slowly emerged.

  Ken handed me the rope. “This one’s yours.”

  Race time was coming up fast. “Get your children back!” the announcer shouted. “These animals have been known to tear into the crowd and wreak bloody havoc.” Parents pushed their kids behind them, then took a closer look at the size of the burros compared to the size of the racers trying to hold them, and backed away themselves.

  “He’s called Blue Note,” Ken shouted. Bleh bleh bleh, he continued, but I lost it in the crowd noise and the fact that he’d just said He. Great—a Jack. I gripped Blue Note even tighter by the halter, trying to stop him from turning around and around in anxious circles. I was getting dizzy from all the spinning when I heard the announcer shout, “TEN!”

  The crowd picked up the count—“NINE! EIGHT!”—while Ken tried to give me one last bit of advice. “There are two ways to start a burro race,” he said. “You can toss a cap in the air, nice and calm.”

  “FOUR…THREE…”

  “Then there’s our way,” Ken concluded.

  Leadville’s mayor let ’er rip with both shotgun barrels, and Harrison Avenue turned into Pamplona. Burros erupted, with Blue Note and me somewhere in the middle. I tried to yank Blue Note out of sprint pace, but he was too wired by the shrieking crowd and clattering hooves. It was all I could do to hang on to the rope as we made the turn off Harrison Avenue and began the steep climb up Seventh Street.

  Suddenly, I heard a scream—not cheering, but a full-on horror-movie shriek of terror. I jerked my head around to see Curtis Imrie, the master burro trainer who’d raced every year since 1974, being dragged on his back by the biggest donkey I’d ever seen. Curtis’s leg was tangled in the lead rope and he was trying to kick free, but the more he struggled, the more the frantic animal tried to get away. I started to let go of my rope, then clutched it again. What would Blue Note do if I ran to Curtis’s rescue? Wouldn’t he plunge into the kids and grannies on the sidewalk?

  Curtis Imrie fights his mammoth racing burro in the Leadville Boom Day race.

  Ken’s son, Cole, leaped onto his mountain bike and charged after Curtis. I lost sight of them as Blue Note hammered on. I was dying for air, too dizzy to think anything besides You gotta hang on. Gotta. Gotta…Suddenly, I ran smack into Blue Note’s butt. He’d stopped in the middle of the road. Another runner had halted his burro by wrapping the rope around a Stop sign, and Blue Note joined them. The other runner and I dropped our hands to our knees, sucking air, while the two burros watched us. I’d survived three minutes of Leadville’s burro race. Four hours, fifty-seven minutes to go.

  I was still recovering when I heard hoofbeats behind us and there, unbelievably, was old Curtis, not only back on his feet but back in the race. “I hate losing blood this early,” he grumbled as he stopped to see if we were okay. The three of us headed off together, climbing the dirt logging road through a tunnel of whispering junipers. At Mile 11 or so, I began to think I just might pull this off. That’s when Blue Note hit the brakes again.

  “Hey ya!” I shouted, as Curtis and the other runner trotted on. “Hey ya!” I tugged on Blue Note’s rope, then grabbed his halter with both hands and leaned back on my heels. Nothing. A spectator hiked up to lend a hand. “The only time I tried this, I gave up,” he said. “I tied the burro to a tree and ran down on my own.”

  He pulled Blue Note’s head while I pushed, then we switched. Hal Walter and Tom Sobal flew past us, heading downhill on the home leg. Runner after runner soon followed, all of them shouting tips and encouragement. The Mosquito Pass turnaround was so close I could almost see it, but Blue Note wouldn’t budge. Half an hour later, I was in the same place when Ken and Curtis came jogging down in last place.

  “Bring the sumbitch home,” Ken panted. “He’s quitting, not you.”

  Fair enough. I spun Blue Note around, and this time he moved—sort of. He ran a few yards, stopped to graze, started again. Somehow we’d swapped roles: I’d become the pack animal, towing deadweight. Five hours after the starting gun, I finally made it back to Harrison Avenue.

  “Not for lack of strength or determination,” shouted Ken, who’d waited around to cheer me in.

  Whatever. I was so bad at burro racing, I wasn’t even good enough to be worst. There’s a special award for “Last Ass Over the Pass,” but you’ve actually got to get to the pass to qualify. At least I still qualify for the only prize I really want, I thought, as I dragged Blue Note along like a mom with a spoiled toddler: All I had to do was cross that stinking finish line and I never, ever had to see a burro again.

  6

  The Beastmaster

  “That’s your idea?” Tanya snorted. “A burro race?”

  She began squinting as I told this story, squeezing her eyes as if trying not to look at me. “So how far would he have to run?” she asked.

  “The World Championship has two distances—”

  “The World Championship.” She was smirking now, as if she’d just caught the punch line. “Not just a race. A World Championship.”

  I actually had a good explanation for why the toughest race might be our best shot, but this was already going worse than I’d expected and I hadn’t even told Tanya the bad news yet: Secretly, I’d already jumped the gun and taken Sherman on a test run. I hadn’t planned to; I wasn’t even sure Sherman would be alive when I got up this morning. But when I saw him marching along all morning in low-speed pursuit
of Lawrence, I couldn’t resist. I got a bag of horse treats and a six-foot lead rope from the feed store. Then I pushed Lawrence out of the way, closing him off behind the gate, and snapped the rope on Sherman’s halter.

  I grabbed one of the apple-flavored pellets and held it under Sherman’s nose. He sniffed it suspiciously, then snuffled it up and munched, one grinding chew at a time. I took two steps back and offered him another. “C’mere, Sherm,” I urged, waving the treat. Sherman looked at me but didn’t move. He just stared at me, a battered stuffed animal with sad Eeyore eyes, the Sherman of yesterday again.

  I felt horrible. “You’re such a dick,” I told myself. This poor guy has been suffering his entire life, and now, right when you’re supposed to be restoring his trust, you pull a bait-and-snatch? “Sorry, Sherman,” I said. I decided to quit messing around and wait for Tanya to get here before I did any serious harm — and that’s when Sherman plopped two steps forward and grabbed the treat from my hand.

  Game on! I retreated a little farther and dug into my pocket for another treat. Before I pulled it out, Sherman was on me. I fed it to him and backed up again. Treat by treat, he trudged and munched his way across the small grassy pasture until we got to the gate. I swung it open, stepped out onto the gravel driveway, and reached in my pocket. Sherman stretched his neck toward the treat but didn’t move his feet. I took a half-step toward him and waved it again.

  “Here we go, buddy,” I coaxed. I gave the lead rope a gentle pull, but it could have been tied to a tree. Sherman dropped his head, staring at the ground. Something about him suddenly seemed different. His feet were planted, his ears were back; he looked braced, as if digging in for a fight. Whatever bonding moment we’d had during our little snack-and-step exercise wasn’t just over; clearly, it was now being held against me as evidence of treachery by a terrified donkey who felt bitterly deceived.

  Man, is he scared, I thought. “Okay, free to go,” I said. I fed Sherman the last treat and un-clicked the rope from his halter. I reached out to give him a pat, but the second the rope fell free of his neck, Sherman spun away and trotted off, beelining straight back to the back gate where Lawrence was pacing back and forth, waiting for him.

  Wow. So he can run. At least a little. And only on grass. I was delighted, but the thrill quickly faded. I had a plan I hoped could bring Sherman back to life, but if his feet were too badly damaged to step on hard surfaces, there was no way I was going to force him. I saw how frightened he was just by looking at gravel, and I wasn’t going to put him through that again. Was there any chance he could recover in a few weeks? A few months?

  Ever?

  Sherman seemed nothing like the donkeys I’d seen in Colorado. To me, they were all tough, mountain-hardened beasts who could run for days and shrug off a tsunami. I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever bring Sherman back from his mental and physical trauma—his desperately lonely months locked in a stinking stall and the near-fatal deterioration of his feet—so that he and I, side by side, could race against them in an ultramarathon.

  Every time I thought about it, I felt both a thrill of excitement and a knot of dread. Running with Sherman would mean forging a bond with one of the most notoriously cranky creatures on earth, training side by side for big miles on god-awful trails in god-awful weather. I’d already seen firsthand what a mistake can mean when hooves are involved; last spring, our neighbor’s son, Elam, was kicked in the face by a mule while adjusting its plow harness. Four surgeries later, his cheekbones are made of plastic and his face remains a sunken mask.

  But that’s what made it so damn irresistible. My gut told me that the one thing that would save Sherman—the one thing he needed more than petting, or shelter, or even Banamine—was movement. Movement is big medicine; it’s the signal to every cell in our bodies that no matter what kind of damage we’ve suffered, we’re ready to rebuild and move away from death and back toward life. Rest too long after an injury and your system powers down, preparing you for a peaceful exit. Fight your way back to your feet, however, and you trigger that magical ON switch that speeds healing hormones to everything you need to get stronger: your bones, brain, organs, ligaments, immune system, even the digestive bacteria in your belly, all get a molecular upgrade from exercise. For that, you can thank your hunter-gatherer ancestors, who evolved to stay alive by staying on the move. Today, movement-as-medicine is a biological truth for survivors of cancer, surgery, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, brain injuries, depression, you name it. So why wouldn’t it also be true for Sherman, with the blood of wild African asses in his veins?

  I heard a weird story years ago about Jimmy Stewart, and it popped back into my mind while I was at this crossroads. The story stuck with me because it described the exact superpower I’d always wanted as a kid. When I watched Saturday-morning cartoons and saw Aquaman control fish with his mind, I wished I could do the same thing with animals, summoning all the dogs in my neighborhood to flee their backyards and assemble by my side, a suburban wolfpack awaiting my telepathic command. That was my dream, to become the Beastmaster—and according to Hollywood legend, Jimmy Stewart really was. People said there was something about him that inspired such trust that all he had to do was talk and even animals would obey. Jimmy Stewart had the gift.

  It’s a crazy story, but if you believe Jimmy Stewart, it’s absolutely true. The way he told it, there was a stunt horse named Pie that was so dangerous, none of the other Western movie stars could handle him. “He was a sort of a maverick. He hurt a couple of people,” Stewart said. “He nearly killed Glenn Ford, ran right into a tree.” But for some reason, Stewart and Pie took a shine to each other. “It was almost a human thing between us. I think we liked each other. I talked to this horse. I know he understood me. I know. I know.”

  What made him so sure? Because of strange episodes like this: Once, Stewart and Pie had to shoot a tricky scene involving a little bell and a band of desperadoes. Stewart was supposed to outwit the outlaws by sticking a bell on his saddle, then slipping off and letting his horse walk into town by itself while he snuck around the back and got the drop on the bad guys. The problem was, how do you explain all this to Pie? Stewart was an actor, not an animal trainer, and there wasn’t one on set.

  “Well, let me talk to him,” Stewart told the director. To Pie, he said, “Now, this is tough because you’re a horse, you see, but you have to walk straight down there and no one’s gonna be on you. You have to walk right straight down and clear to the other end of the set.” The film crew braced for a long night of muffed takes. Instead, they nailed it in one shot. “Pie did it the first time,” Stewart exulted. “It was amazing.”

  Maybe Stewart got lucky. Or maybe he was a world-class bullshitter who knew how to spin a good yarn. But isn’t it just as likely, as I tend to believe, that the same empathy and imagination that made him a great actor also allowed him to connect with other creatures? To communicate with them as equals? Toward the end of his career, Stewart made Johnny Carson tear up on The Tonight Show by unfolding a sheet of paper from his pocket and reading a poem he carried around about his dead dog, Beau:

  Sometimes I’d feel him sigh and I think I know the reason why.

  He would wake up at night

  And he would have this fear

  Of the dark, of life, of lots of things,

  And he’d be glad to have me near.

  That’s right; most of us would give a kidney to understand why our dog won’t stop barking at the door, yet let a hound yawn at two in the morning and Jimmy Stewart sees right to the depths of its soul. Odd as these stories sound, there’s a case to be made that when it comes to being the Pie Whisperer, science is actually on Stewart’s side. “Sound sometimes carries emotions across species,” points out Carl Safina, the renowned animal behaviorist. “Our shared capacity to perceive it is part of our deep inheritance. Whether the receiving ears belong to a human, a dog, or a horse, several
short upward calls cause increased excitement, long descending calls are calming, and a single short abrupt sound can pause a misbehaving dog or a child with a hand in the cookie jar.”

  For most of human existence, animal intuition wasn’t just common; it was a matter of life or death. Our ancestors thought about animals all the time; from the second their eyes opened till they closed at night and during their dreams in between. They had to understand animals, instantly and intimately, or they’d have been wiped out. The story of Beau and Jimmy, basically, is the story of our survival.

  To grasp that, consider this: did we train the first dogs, Carl Safina asks, or did they train us? There was a time when humans ranked pretty low as hunters. We were worse than Neanderthals, who were bigger, stronger, and possibly smarter, and wolves, which had superior fangs, speed, and tracking ability. In a Stone Age battle for food, you really don’t want to be third on the power chart. But we did have one thing on our side: we were terrific thieves. If we saw a good idea (or a hunk of bison), we stole it. Our ancestors learned to lope along behind the wolf packs, grabbing up the leftovers once the wolves had brought down their prey and gobbled their fill. Over time, we adopted the same harass-and-swarm tactics, but what really vaulted us to the top of the food chain was when we stopped copying wolves and began cooperating with them.

  We can thank the wolves for that, Safina contends, because they probably made the first move. Wolves are super curious, and their ability to scent human anxiety would allow them to sniff out the safest moment to approach us. That was a fateful day: our ancestors, crouching and uncertain, watched this alpha beast edging toward them and made a decision that would change the course of history. Like a Hollywood meet-cute, the wariness on both sides soon melted away because wolves, better than any other creatures, really got us. They quickly figured out how we think because their brains were pre-wired with perception skills similar to ours, something Safina calls “human-like social cognition.”