I Rode a Horse From Mexico to Canada. 2,650 Miles, Five Months, One Horse, One Mule and No Plan B. I Was 45, Single and Everybody Said I Was Running Away

A lame horse in the High Sierra, two days’ ride from the nearest road, is the kind of problem that ends a trip.

It can end a horse.

I unpacked him on the creek bank and went over that leg inch by inch. No break that I could feel. A hot spot in the hoof. A bruise, maybe. Maybe an abscess. Maybe worse.

I didn’t have a vet. I didn’t have a signal.

I had a hoof knife, a tube of iodine, a bag of Epsom salts and twenty years of shoeing horses.

So I did what my grandfather taught me. I cleaned the hoof. I found the abscess, a pocket of infection under the sole. I opened it. I soaked it in the creek with salts every two hours for three days and three nights, and in between, I slept on the ground next to him with my hand on his neck.

Pancho stood guard. Every time a bear or a hiker came near, he’d bray like a fire alarm.

On the fourth morning, Scout put his foot down.

Then he put his weight on it.

Then he walked to the creek and drank like nothing had ever happened.

I sat down on a rock and laughed until I cried.

Two hikers came by while I was sitting there. A father and son from Oregon. The son was about fourteen. He looked at me, then at the horse, then at the mule.

“Are you the guy riding to Canada?” he asked.

“How do you know about that?”

“Everybody knows about you,” he said. “The hikers at the resupply stations post about you. They call you the Horse Guy. There’s like a whole Instagram page.”

There was. Some German hiker had made it. It had eighty thousand followers.

People were following my trip. Sending messages. Donating to a horse rescue in my name. A little girl in Ohio had drawn a picture of Pancho.

I hadn’t known any of it.

That night, I got one bar of signal on a ridge above Tuolumne Meadows.

There was a message waiting.

It was from my ex-girlfriend.

*I was wrong about you,* it said.