My Mis-Adventure

The second morning on the canyon rim, back at the San Isidro Lodge, I woke early, worn, exhausted, sun-baked and dehydrated. Lisa stayed in bed because the mountain air is colder and the sun was just getting ready to come up. I peeked out and saw Tito and his brother Mario were up with coffee on the wood campfire. So I got up, dressed and joined them. We chatted about the “safari” ride and the hike Lisa and I took (more later) and I took a cup of coffee to walk around and explore a little.
They have a handful of horses and a few large beautiful mules for packing and riding the canyon trails. Part of a tour group had taken a trail ride the day before when we went down to the river at the base of the canyon. They were out of the corral, and it looked like they were grazing or eating at some grain and hay that had been set out early for them. Large, strong and yet very lean animals, you can tell they are geared for high elevation and steep long hot rides. I thought I would go over and say good morning, missing the feel and smell of the horses around our own fence line in Spring Grove in the summer.

When I was in 5th grade, our family took the classic Minnesota Resort week vacation to Camper’s Paradise on Lake Darling near Alexandria. The two things I remember most was the night we discovered that the old flip top pop machine that you were supposed to have to put a dime into to get your soda pop from was actually broken. All you had to do was push back a lever at the opening and slide a bottle out for free!! My brother Bill and I spent the better part of the afternoon getting sick on free Fresca and Orange Crush.

The other thing I remember was how deathly afraid of horses I was. I think the whole family, except me and my little sister Cathye at the time who was probably in 2nd grade, all took horseback riding lessons and went a trail ride. I can still see the family photo album of everyone proudly getting their riding ribbons and riding around the ring while I sat like a scared little cowboy on the fence in my knee length cut off jeans, a plaid short-sleeve Opie Taylor shirt, and my Manor Park Badgers Little League hat propped on my round buzzed-haircut head. Scared to go near the horses. Well, a few trail rides on half dead Riding Ranches in high school and college, together with moving to the farm in Spring Grove, got me over my fear and trepidation. I have since taken riding lessons and am quite sure I used to be related to Festus Parker in a previous life and actually rode with Matt Dillon on more than one posse.

But this morning, a healthy dose of trepidation was with me as I strolled over to the horses.
They were after all strangers to me. They were not the lovely coddled gentle giants that Lisa brushes down every night at our place. So I approached them with caution, steaming coffee mug in hand. A large dark caramel colored mule with a black mane and tail was broadside to me grazing on breakfast. I cooed and approached her slowly. I gently chimed good morning and slowly raised my hand palm down to allow a sniff of my hand. She watched me, and I watched her ears…they were not pinned back, and she continued to nibble at the grain and hay seeds on the rock along with 3 or 4 other horses.

My hand stretched out to her side, and I ever so slowly brushed two soft finger tips across her soft coat. Then all time seemed to stop…..

In hindsight, it was no more than 3 seconds. But it was a combination of interminable fear and fright, and a slow motion yet laser light-speed with which my mind’s eye saw this huge animal twitch her rear end, shuffle her hind legs, and with blinding speed and ferocity lash out and squarely catch my thigh with a hoof the size of a large dinner plate! In the half second that this happened, with my finger never leaving the handle of my coffee cup, I flinched backwards as I knew what was happening but in no way was fast enough to get out of the way.

All at once I felt like I got hit by a truck…I was lifted off my feet and projected in a straight line about 4 feet straight backwards, where to make matters worse I landed square on one cheek of my ass on top of a tree root that loomed up from the hard earth like frozen 2 foot long salami embedded in the rocks. I literally saw the coffee that was previously steaming in my cup, suspended in front of me in the air before it came crashing down with me. I fell like a ton of bricks and filled with adrenaline and my hair standing on end I automatically got to my unsteady feet and moved 10 feet away before collapsing back to my knees. I could not believe my thigh had not broken cleanly in half. I was shaking uncontrollably, and the pain in my butt was stretching quickly down my leg all the way to my calf.

I did a couple of knee bends just to make sure I had not actually broken a bone. My thigh was beginning to throb like the train pulling hard up the mountain the day before. I walked unsteadily back to the cabin with my coffee cup still attached to my finger, half filled with dirt from my fall. I got Lisa out of bed to make sure I was not hallucinating or something, and to check me over to make sure I was not broken. In the course of the next two days, and still to this day….a bruise developed on my inner right thigh that stretches 13” long, and wraps 8” around my leg. Deep colorful blues, black, purples and now greens mixed with yellow. I have a deep black bone bruise on my cheek the size of lemon, and if its possible to bruise a nerve, I hit the one that runs all the way down your leg.


This put a slight damper on the next couple of days, and is the real reason why we took another day to relax and stay at San Isidro in the mountains before heading up taller into the Copper Canyon. By the way, the nearest “clinic” was 2 hours north on the train to the tourist trap Indian Village town of Creel, and the nearest hospital was 5 hours back by train to El Fuerte, after the 2 hour journey by buckboard dirt roads to the train station at Bauhichivo.

So all in all, I consider myself fortunate, and gently reacquainted with a healthy dose of fear and trepidation among strange horses.