Jericha with a young burro
[Note: I wrote this ten years ago. The situation for wild burros and horses is far, far worse now... Why does this country not take better care of its living national treasures?]
From the high slopes of the Panamint Mountains the Vietnam vet in the chopper pushes longeared herds to flat spaces below. Down and away from the coolest green offered by the hottest place on earth, out to the alkali plain where men wait on horses, lariats in hand. Vibration and swooping of the machine moves the multitude. One by one, the chopper cuts animals from the herd, coaxing and coercing each racing burro to a wrangler. These get them into a makeshift corral. Later, aboard waiting trailers.
This is late February, the fourth annual Wild Burro Rescue roundup at Death Valley National Monument in California. BBC cameras roll as a good “practice round” for a far more ambitious event coming in 1999 plays out. Today's caring people are taking care of yesterday's unfinished animal business -- rounding up the hoards of descendants of Jack and Jenny. Old southwestern prospectors let their packing companions roam free in return for years of service. Babies follow mamas, while each jack runs for himself. One ancient gets cheers and high fives from wranglers when he wheels, deliberately runs beneath the chopper and heads back up to his beloved home.
Things happen so fast, most of the donkeys have no time to take stock of what occurs during their first close-up contact with the human race. Within hours of their last free night in familiar surroundings, 26 members of the wild burro herd of the Panamint Mountains are established in large corrals set up in the ghost town of Death Valley Junction.
The town is not entirely dilapidated. It is owned by one Marta Becket, a ballet dancer, who operates a hotel in the largest of the facilities there. A resplendent Opera House, covered inside with Becket's paintings of various dramatic productions, is at one end of the horse-shoe shaped Amaragosa Hotel, a gourmet ice cream shop is at the other. The hotel, partially restored, is a sort of half ghost facility. All three do a brisk business at times. David, who greets us the hotel, tells me that he is dying of cancer, thanks to years of working in a federally controlled area nearby. He also tells me the federal government never told area residents anything approaching truth about what goes on at certain military installations.
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Scared burros are now in the care of a woman, one of a few who could take such a group, calm and gentle them into enjoying her presence within a couple of days. Diana Chontos, co-founder of Wild Burro Rescue, then of Onalaska, Washington. Energetic, unfailing of determination, independent as the rugged mountains close by, ready to accomplish her work single handed or with an army of volunteers, she is in charge of the rescue operation. The organization she runs with Gene Chontos [see note below] removes from Death Valley National Park every spring as many wild burros as the National Park Service would otherwise shoot in its drive to eradicate donkeys from its holdings across the west.
Twenty-six longeared creatures happens to be the greatest number WBR has taken in the four seasons they have been doing this expensive work. In the spring of '99 they must remove 100. If they fail, the NPS will shoot the animals.
Surely the shocked burros find comfort in huddling together during their first night in the temporary corrals Diana has set up. Sixteen jacks in one pen, ten jennies and babies in the other. All family, accustomed to one another’s ways. Diana gathers native vegetation for them to eat as they adjust to an unfamiliar diet of bermuda hay. The moon crawls across the bright, starry sky, while the sounds the jacks make to one another lulls Diana to sleep in her nearby ghost cottage. "Like listening to shamans," she says later.
Of possible interest to the newly fenced-in little group is a band of wild horses living close to the Junction. Burros watch as Diana offers hay to the horses. Probably their first chance to observe that some wild ones are not terrified of all humans. Among broken adobe ruins of a once flourishing borax mining town these horses eke a living. Stallions brawl, foals nurse, yearlings lie in the sun, mares jostle for the best bits of forage. Standing among greasewood at the edge of town, they eye the new animals nervously, before deciding it is safe to approach hay scattered near the corrals. The flat vastness of the plain ringed by mountains lends security.
Divided into two pens, jacks in one, moms and babies in the other, the burros quickly settle into a routine. Food morning and evening. Slow, cautious, steady approach and handling by Diana.
By the time Jericha and I arrive to assist, the animals have been penned for six days. Some march like practiced panhandlers for treats when people appear through the tamarisks bordering the corrals. Ears at attention, they gaze steadfastly, indomitably, anticipating ear scratches and carrots alike. It’s not so hard to tame wild burros.
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Death Valley Junction, dry, crackling hot, real as crumbled adobe and cracked alkali soil beneath the flaming sun, has other-wordly moments. Perhaps the wild beings notice this, too? A psychic visiting the pens claimed to see a young girl talking to the herd. Nearby, Diana saw no girl, but did observe the burros gathered to gaze at a spot by the fence. Her sharpei/hound, Mojo, was likewise drawn to the spot, until he began walking away from it. The psychic said that the child was moving with the dog.
Later Diana mentioned the experience to Marta Becket. Artist, dancer, musician and businesswoman, Becket responded that when the Junction served as headquarters for the borax mining crew, a little girl lived in the cabin alongside the jenny corral. Her mother drowned her in a bathtub. The cabin still stands there.
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There is a spirit of communication among species in this place. Solitude lover that I am, I relish hours with wild burros and horses beneath sun and stars. Feral cats, peacocks and emus add their tones to the night chorus. Castoffs all, finding sanctuary on the land of octogenarian Marta Becket. Ostensibly I am here to keep tourists from approaching the corrals too closely lest burros should push their heads through the bars and become stuck. But since motorists of any kind are rare as hen’s teeth, I have time to explore.
The horses are compelling. Several have severe hoof deformities, probably due to the high selenium of the area. Two walk almost on the front part of the leg where the fur touches the hoof. Clubfoot. When hay is plentiful at the Junction, these find it worthwhile to hang around the ruins.
We eye one another from a distance, the horses and I. First with buildings between us. They close distance gradually, approaching to watch with the safety of penned donkeys between us. The grey, older mare is content with this arrangement. Her bay daughter is more curious. Should I stand close to the hay, all eat nervously, as long as I am quiet. When rations run out, so do the horses.
There is no hay left one twilight as I prepare to say goodnight to the burros and Diana, and head back to a pleasant bath in our quarters at the adjacent Amargosa Hotel. As I stand near a tamarisk thicket, the younger mare slowly and steadily walks beside the burro fences, coming straight to me.
Time slows. A deeper stillness settles with the clear, blue twilight. Deliberately, the young mare presses her nose close to mine as we feel each other’s breath. Her short whiskers tickle my face. Exchanging breaths for long moments, the time is pure magic. From different worlds though we be, this animal and I have a bond. We share disabilities, I, my crutches and leg braces due to childhood polio, she, her twisted foot on which she cannot run.
She pulls away when I slowly reach a hand towards her face to see if she allows that sort of acknowledgment. Stands back a couple of feet, watches me with her dark eyes, so calm. They are luminous in the growing darkness, but I think the glow is from her thought rather than actual light. Her message goes something like this: “We are different from our own kind, you and I. We know this. And we survive. We will survive.”
How I want to fix her poor foot! A good farrier could do wonders for that shrunken, disfigured leg. In time she might even run in the graceful manner of her kind, flowing across the plains and into the mountains. But her wildness stands against such attention. She knows of no other choice.
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Several weeks later the burro herd is dispersed. Jacks and a jenny family are trailered to a sanctuary in Arizona, jennies and foals travel to Wild Burro Rescue's sanctuary near the Washington coast. Mustangs again roam empty pathways at Death Valley Junction. With her partner, Tom Willett, "Willget," Marta Becket performs her regular, original shows to packed audiences in the old Opera House so close to where the burro corrals had been standing.
Becket's own two rescued burros share sunshine and shade between tumble down ghost houses, waiting for the spring when brays of a hundred kin from rugged mountains nearby will again briefly transform the quiet place to the Burro Capital of the West.
~ August, 1998
June, 2008. I’ve lost touch with Diana, who has lived off the grid in Olancha, California for some years now. There she is closer to the burros she has rescued. Her new website:
Wild Burro Rescue
An update on her situation with her 190 burros is on the California Best Friends site:
Diana and her burros
Marta Becket has stopped dancing, being well into her 80s now, but she still performs, and her Opera House celebrated its 40th anniversary in February, 2008. A documentary about her life, called Amargosa, was produced by Triple Play Productions a year after my visit, and it won an Emmy. If you get a chance, you have to see that Opera House. In the midst of a crumbling ghost town, it gleams with whiteness outside. Inside it glows with the brilliant colours of murals all over the wall, and woodcarvings of Marta pirouetting.
And for those who like a little less ghost town and a little more choice in places to eat when visiting the wild burros of the southwestern USA, here’s a link to historic Oatman, Arizona, where the burros roam the streets and the shop ownerss are used to longeared customers:
Oatman, Arizona
