One day twenty-four years ago, Little Girl had really gotten me mad. She was a super brat. Well, she flipped my switch and the last thing I screamed at her, “You’re just a little girl and you will never grow up! You’re always going to be a Little Girl.” Well since Lady retired, she has grown up and taken on Lady’s role. She is doing a great job.
The Mules want to thank Paula and Larry for allowing me and Little Girl to stay on their property until February 28th when we will see the urologist in regards to the swollen prostate which has pretty much kept us from practicing our nomadic lifestyle of walking all day, every day.
During the storm, Paula and Larry lent us their strong and sturdy REI tent since our tent poles broke. They said we could keep the tent, however it is way too big to carry on Little Girl all day. A tent half this size would fare us well. 6 foot x 5 foot x 40-inches high or something very close is what works best for us. The poles need to be able to fit in the pack boxes.
We have found that tents under $50 sold on the internet are of such poor quality and strength and not usable under our circumstances…tent material is usually paper thin with fiberglass toothpick-like poles or poor quality zippers that break with only a few uses. We are looking for a high quality tent 6 foot by 5 foot by 40-inches and haven’t found one yet on the internet. If you find one that fits what we are looking for, please let us know. Send link so that we can read the dimensions to ensure that the collapsed poles will fit in the pack boxes. Or, if you have a tent these dimensions that you are no longer using, please send us a photo with dimensions and length of collapsed poles.
The poles of our tent broke. The perfect sized tent for us is a one-person tent that is 5 feet wide by 6 feet long approximately 42-inches high.
Does anybody have a dome tent these dimensions with fly cover that they are no longer using?
Looking for tent before the next big storm hits this Thursday.
If you have a tent this size or know where we can find one this size in Bakersfield, send us a message. Thank you.
Lady’s days of wandering across the earth carrying a pack load on her back have now come to an end. She will now spend her remaining days in this dimension, which she so admirably served for the past 37 years, in retirement. Though Lady will no longer be serving the 3 Mule Nation as she has, we are sure she will be serving this nation in ways yet unforeseen. Little Girl and myself will forever be aware of her presence.
As Lady gave her unrelenting energy to the 3 Mules Nation that energy returns to Lady embodied in these great people – Melinda, Eric, Bonnie and Porvidio, who came forth from the mist to serve and care for Lady.
She will now be going to another place where we know she will experience the best of care by Sharon.
3 Mules Nation will be watching Lady and anticipating with excitement to see how Lady’s energy and magic will find yet another way to contribute to the wealth of the nation, the 3 Mules Nation.
~The Mules
Here are some photos that Sharon shared with us of Lady settling down in her new home and being welcomed by her horse and neighbor’s pony.
We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.~Robert Louis Stevenson
In April 2016, I was coming back from Los Angeles with the Mules, coming down San Emigdio Canyon at Wind Wolves Preserve in Bakersfield. I had hung my cartridge belt on the saddle horn. My cartridge belt carried my cell phone, camera, various devices and wallet. When I stopped to rest for the night and was unpacking the kids, I discovered that it was missing. It had come loose and fallen off.
I remembered where and when I stopped to take off my cartridge belt and hung it around the saddle horn, but I had no idea at which point it fell off. Did it get caught up in a tree branch or bush along the trail and fall off? For the next week, I walked back and forth along a 3-mile wide open stretch searching in San Emigdio Canyon along the creek trail and swept the tall grasses in the pasture to no avail and couldn’t find it. I notified the administrative office at Wind Wolves Preserve in case any hiker turned it in. I thought that I would never see it again.
Almost eleven months later, this past Monday evening, I received the following message from Eli Smith: “John, I was hiking at Wind Wolves Preserve and found something that belongs to you. Why don’t you message me and we can coordinate getting it back to you!”
Unbelievable!
This evening, Eli and his friends drove from Los Angeles to Bakersfield and very graciously returned everything to me. The Mules want to thank Eli for his honesty and taking the time to search for me and reconnect me with my belongings.
We appreciate all the good people we encounter in our ages old nomadic way of life. Each day we are reminded that we’re here: the outside, the web of life, the beautiful earth, a place like no other. We have come to this place, a place of golden sparkling light, a place for anybody and everybody. Give your faith, hope and energy to this place at which time you connect to it and receive the magic and endless possibility of infinity. As you walk in this place with these mules you spread the awareness that this beautiful earth, like no other, can only be protected by the way we live one day at a time.
Lady is too old now to haul a load all day so we left her with some great folks. It’s just Little Girl and the monk now. We’ll have another blog post or several coming soon sharing stories of our 31 years traveling with Lady.
The photo above is Little Girl standing alone infused and enveloped by the energy of 3 Mules Nation, a nation of people following, watching, giving their hope, faith and energy to that nation. A Nation born from a history of hundreds of thousands of years. Human beings wandering and living with their animal companions with respect and reverence for each other and the planet earth from which their nation and themselves were born. A 3 Mules Nation of people (human beings) unwilling to accept and conform to the new paradigm of gadgetry and glitz (endless discovery) at the cost of that most sacred relationship immersed in the magic and wonder of human beings wandering their home earth.
~The Mules
On Thursday morning, we packed up and left San Emigdio Canyon where we had spent the previous day. That night the temperature at 6,085 feet elevation was below freezing (in the low 20s or high teens with wind chill) – much colder than it was below the mouth of the canyon where we had been camped. Our intended destination was San Diego. The El Camino Viejo a Los Ángeles (Old Road to Los Angeles) is the route to get there by foot from Wind Wolves Preserve.
We traveled up the canyon for 2 hours 45 minutes, then reached the highway at Pine Mountain Club and proceeded east. We reached Frazier Park (elevation 4,542 ft) about 4:30pm. We had walked 6 hours that day with temperatures in the high 30s and decided to stop for the night and exercise our God given and legal right as well as anybody else’s whether traveling by horseback, bicycle or merely walking to use public space when in transit from one place to the next for the purpose of rest.
I unpacked the kids, put them on picket lines, made them comfortable, pitched my tent, ate some oatmeal, and went to sleep.
Upon awakening in the morning, I walked up the bank to check the kids and found Lady to be in distress. I maintained a watch for one hour and decided to get her to a vet.
I called the lady who voluntarily serves as the 3Mules.com admin and informed her to the situation. Using the 3 Mules Facebook page, she contacted the many people who follow and offer their help and support to the Mules on their endless journey through the Megatropolis.
The help the Mules needed materialized in a very short time in the form of Scott Rogers, president of Backcountry Horsemen of California – Kern Sierra Unit, Gretchen and her boss Tom, who came with a horse trailer.
We loaded Lady and Little Girl into the trailer and went to Bakersfield Veterinary Large Animal Hospital where she was thoroughly checked and declared to be in excellent condition for her 38 years of age. (Vet thought that the freezing temperatures at high elevation may have caused her stress as her condition improved at 300 feet above sea level.)
The Mules are now at Scott Rogers ranch where they will stay a few days then return to Wind Wolves Preserve. The Mules can no longer expect Lady at her 38 years to serve the Mules as she has so admirably done for most of her life. She is nearing retirement. She has earned and deserves it.
The Mules say thank you to all those who have joined this new nation, a nation growing up within a nation, by giving their hope, faith and energy to this nation. Respect and reverence for this earth and all its inhabitants.
The Mules
The Mules give thanks on this Thanksgiving Day for this beautiful place called earth, the home of the human race. We give thanks to creation for all the animal companions who we enjoy and share this magical dance of energy and motion played out on the earthly stage. We give thanks for all the people we have met along the way and follow the 3 Mules page and peer through the window and watch and support the Mules on their endless journey using their God given right to move freely on earth. The Mules are all of us and we must be and remain free if we are to stay human.
Happy Thanksgiving.
The Mules
The other day as we were heading back to Wind Wolves after getting groceries and supplies in Bakersfield, the Wild West was materializing before our eyes with a large amount of sheep tracks and droppings left everywhere.
Curious about where these sheep came from and where they were going, we did a Google search on “Bakersfield sheep” and an interesting Los Angeles Times article returned called “End of a Tradition: Young Basque Shepherds No Longer Flock to Calif.” The article discusses the Basque immigrants who have been coming to California for over 100 years to herd sheep as few Americans want these jobs.
What caught our eye in this article the description of Aleman and his nomadic life as a shepherd in California.
“For 21 years Aleman has lived the lonely, nomadic life of a California shepherd. After the winter lambing, Aleman spends April and May in the Mojave Desert watching his flock during spring grazing. He spends his summers on the mile-high meadows of the Owens Valley on the slopes of the Sierra. In the fall, he returns to the Kern County foothills.”
“At one time, Aleman and the other shepherds lived in tents and followed their flocks’ peregrinations by foot over the century-old California Sheep Trail. It was one of the longest animal drives in the nation–400 miles over the Tehachapis to Mojave, up past Lone Pine and Bishop to the high mountain summer meadows of the Sierra and then back to Kern County.”
“We adapted to the loneliness of shepherding better than a lot of people because most of us are from very small villages with few neighbors. We grew up with the isolation.”
Maybe sometime in the future, the Mules will find and explore this 400-mile trail. Have any of our readers ever traveled the California Sheep Trail? If so, tell us about it.
In California, there is a high speed bullet train being built at a cost of $64 billion dollars. The Megatropolis plans the first prototype to run from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It will split the state right down the middle much like the San Andreas Fault with no less potential disastrous consequences.
It will require a massive surveillance apparatus to guard and protect from terrorists at a cost of billions of more dollars. People living anywhere nearby will be considered a possible terrorist threat by the surveillance state. Their children will be tested in school for possible terrorist tendencies. This will all be done under the guise and pretense of providing a fast, quick way to get from point A to B in complete comfort and ease.
Pull back the smoke screen of glitz, gadgetry and endless discovery and the Mules see the Megatropolis using this bullet train (machine) to seize and bring under its control more space to satisfy its insatiable appetite for contained and controlled energy (be it human, animal, wind, sun, etc.) on earth.
The bullet train is yet another scheme brought forth by the Megatropolis to drag the Human Race down a dark hole to be disconnected from ourselves, each other and our home, the Earth. To be forever wandering and lost in the manmade world of gadgetry, glitz and endless discovery. You bump into somebody, they ask you who you are, where you are from, and you won’t have a clue.
The Mules have an alternate proposal to the Megatropolis’s bullet train:
A multi-use trail system going in all four directions,
– Hooking all communities to all communities
– Connecting people with reverence and respect for each other and their surroundings
– Moving at a pace that is in harmony with the natural flowing energy that flows around and through us
– Learning to use that energy to heal our bodies and nurture our souls
– Teaching the children the magic and joy of being real human beings connected to the Natural World
– Bringing people together to solve the problems that face them with cooperation and respect.
The Public Thoroughfare, a multi-use trail system, is the place for the fist step in the right direction.
The Mules
Note: If you agree with this, please make a copy and send where you think it will do the most good.
