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Stories from Bernie's current trip - a mule voyage from Canada to Mexico

March 29, 2007

For those of you who’ve watched me get ready for the Lost Sea Expedition, you’ll know sign painting isn’t my forte. Wagon building? Sure. No problem. But good signage? Well, I tried on my last wagon and it came out looking like this.


Sign Number 1
Bayboro, NC
March 2006

Sort of stiff, right? And that was the good side. Suffice to say I was overjoyed when Laura Turgeon of Oriental, NC, agreed to help me paint a proper sign while I wrapped up other details of my pending journey.

Here’s where I need to back up.

Last year at this time, I finished one of the signs on the original Lost Sea wagon (my current one is Release II). That’s the picture above, Sign 1. Then I got in a hurry. Instead of writing out “Captain Bernie’s Dry Dock Expedition” (I would later rename it the “Lost Sea” expedition.”) I just penciled in the letters and painted as many as I had time for. Then I hit the road. That side of the wagon looked like this.


Sign Number 2
March 2006

Yeah, right, it sent a confusing message. “You do what…with docks?” folks asked as I rolled by in my mule wagon. I spent more time explained what I did wrong than it would have taken for me to the job right in the first place.

This time, with Laura handling the brushes, things unfolded rather more elegantly.


The “art” in RiverEarth.com
Oriental, NC

Here’s how the new Lost Sea Wagon sign looks – on both sides of my rig.


Sign Number 3
Laura and dog Jack
Oriental, NC

Thanks Laura, and husband Gil, for sending me up the road with a sign that’s elegant and complete. And yes, I noticed the stow-away.

Stow-away? Yep, that’s right. Laura painted a tiny hitch hiker into her artwork so mule Polly and I would have company as we rolled across America. Next time you drop by for a visit, see if you can spot it.

Until then, if you’re interested in more of Laura’s artwork drop by towndock.net to see if you can spot Jack the dog…

Bernie
RiverEarth.com

Posted Thursday March 29, 2007 by Bernie
March 17, 2007

It’s almost time to hit the road with mule Polly and the Lost Sea Wagon. In two weeks, on April 1, I plan to move full time into my mule wagon. So why am I planting a garden at this late hour?

I’m doing it for Norman Laman. Rather, in honor of Norman and all the other folks I met on my last journey across America.


Norman and his mules
Artesia, NM

I met Norman in Artesia, New Mexico during my 12 1/2 month journey across America with Woody and Maggie. It was late November and I was about to tackle the southern end of the Rocky Mountains – a rough route at the beast of times, a blizzard-prone one during winter.

Norman owned a covered mule wagon pulled by his two mules, Smokey and Ghost. He accompanied my equine troop from Artesia almost to the foothills of the Rockies.


In transit

The evening we parted company, he put a small plastic baggie in my hands. It contained chili petins, the small peppers, way hotter than jalapenos, that grow wild in southern Texas and Mexico.


A palmful of fire
Hope, NM

I won’t get into how those chilis kept us warm (that’s in the “Too Proud to Ride a Cow” book, my grown-up account of the 3, 500-mile journey that’s due out in June 2007). Let’s just say those chilis burned me in a place where I couldn’t make tears to wash away the pain. Good thing, too, because at the time, we were just recovering from a major snow dump and freezing, not incineration, was on my mind.


Woody in the New Mexico Rockies
Winter 2005

Anyway, we survived the scalding and the Rockies and completed our journey a few months later at the Pacific Ocean.

On the return trip to Southern Pines, NC, I visited Norma and his wife Idella. They gave me a chili pepper plant, a direct descendant of the plant whose peppers had melted more than snow on that frigid Rocky Mountain passage.

I planted that chili in Southern Pines last year and it kept me company as I wrote “Woody and Maggie Walk Across America”. A prolific bearer, it supplied me with dozens of small, red, four-times-as-hot-as-a-jalapeno-pepper fruit.

Then it died.

I went into a funk, feeling like the thread between Norman and I, and all the other folks that had helped me travel across America, had been severed. Then I remembered the bowl of dried chilis I kept over the kitchen sink. Most every day, I reached into it, plucked out a dried red pod and shredded it into my rice or pasta. I put a few choice pods aside, and the following spring, dropped a few seeds into peat pots- wishing, hoping…

Sure enough, they sprouted and I’ve been planting their descendants ever since. Last week I dropped the latest round of Norman’s seeds (are they great-great chilis now?) into eight peat pots. Today, I found the first leaf.


Leaf one

In the coming days, I’ll be finding new homes for my chilis. Most will go to friends, my way of passing on the favor that Norman gave me. The rest will go into the farm garden where Woody and Maggie live in Southern Pines. By the time I’ve moved into my mule wagon, I’ll have none left.

I haven’t a clue when I’ll be back from this next trip. One thing’s for sure, though. I’ll come home to Norman’s chilis and the thread of our friendship will be preserved.

Good luck with your spring planting.

Bernie
RiverEarth.com

Posted Saturday March 17, 2007 by Bernie