About The Author Barry Murray

I am finding great irony in publishing this Fifth Edition of what a number of readers consider to be a classic. Thank you, the nameless librarian at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, who ordered six copies of the self published, First Printing.

The editors of LIFE, and Holiday Magazine, whittled down some of my story of pioneering the Pacific Crest Trail, 2,500 miles by horseback —1969-70. (you can read the account of this family adventure here Search For A Shadow Of The Past.Com) Being a actual horse person, who understood that horses too wanted their 15-minutes of fame, I decided to document what it had taken to accomplish that feat, without losing a single horse in what had been the family, “that seemed to be able to do anything.”

Thank you newspaper book reviewers of the Second Printing for your kindness, and the Portland, Oregon TV station that ran footage of me and Jed rounding up my small herd (“Smile big, guys when you run by the slow motion camera!”) topped off with Big Enough making his comment during the interview part by grabbing the book and shaking it up and down in approval. Wish I had that footage to share.

The Third Printing featured Pokey on the cover— as he still is. Boy was my $75 “Arab Style” purchase proud that he had passed the pointed questions of my checklist.

Then came a very dark period of my life. Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to be slimed. I came home from a business trip to an empty house. The mother of my children had filed for divorce? My life’s work as a photographer, and the paste-up boards of this book, disappeared into a void that has impacted what is left of my family, down to my grandchildren. I learned of her boyfriend as a healthy Pokey, listed as mine in the papers, died the morning following a Sunday after church ride by the “lovers.” When I buried my friend I looked for, and could not find a single mark for a clue as to what had happened.

And as if to prove, as some say that catrosphies run together, I had decided on the third printing to kick up the number of copies, with a perfect binding, and do it professionally. I turned over 10,000 copies to a book wholesaler, and enjoyed a monthly report on the royalties I would be collecting at the end of a consignment contract year. The unexpected was the “respectable” firm eventually went bankrupt. I wasn’t able to recover anything —what I had earned, and what was left of my books— as according to their lawyers I had not registered my consignment with the state.

Anyhow, the combination of Pokey’s death, and my family stampeding off into oblivion, was the end of my obsession with acquiring/raising horses. I drifted the West as a prospector for a number of years until my string became to old to waddle out from the deep grass under an apple tree. During this time I worked with a number of Idaho adopt-a-mustang four-year olds, and fell in love with their knowledge on how to safely navigate broken ground at full speed.

Then, no longer obligated to the care and feeding of any other living creation, I found myself diving for gold in the jungle of Darien Province, Panama. And guess what— teaching the Choco Indians how to fashion a bosal so they work with their Paso Fino horses to achieve one of the smoothest gaited rides ever. In the back of my mind I have a mind movie of anthropologists trying to explain how English voice commands, ended up in a Spanish speaking country, in a village so remote that the men wore breechclouts, and the women were topless. (see www.bannerbooks.com/codeyellow/cover_code_yellow.html for the background story)

I finally ended up in the wilderness Alaska Range where —surprise— I had the last great ride of my life. One day my closest neighbor landed his super-cub at my airstrip and brought some “fresh stuff,” as lettuce, eggs, etc. up to my cabin. His gift came with a suggestion that I might find it fun to do him a favor by rescuing a colt that had pulled a picket pin and returned, across 55-wilderness miles to where “Whiteout” — a typical Canadian Chunk— had been born in, of course, a whiteout.

I had a bush plane scheduled to pick me up soon, so I knew I didn’t have the week’s time it had taken three assistant guides to lead the string purchased from another guide after he had suffered a heart attack, from Farewell, Alaska, to Post Lake. Of course their were no roads. There wasn’t even a trail through the mountainous terrain, other than following a braided river. I asked if I could push the pony to cover the ground inside of two days.

Whiteout and I spent the first two miles off the Farewell airstrip, doing circles, heading the the general direction of south. After a wag of his wings flying overhead, I began to realize that I was riding a colt that had only been packed, and ridden once. That we were totally alone, and if I was thrown, and “gone missing” absolutely nobody would know where to find my body. So, on one long, downhill, spinning of circles, knocking down willow trees when Whiteout became tangled in a larger group, I was forced to make a point. With his head up against my knee, I reached down and pinched his nostrils shut. I looked into his frightened eyes and told him in a harsh voice, “You give this up, now, or you will be the one to die.”

From then on the ride was an absolute pleasure. I was even able to hang the reins up as Whiteout led the way back to his “new home.” Remember I had never done the route on the ground; and this was his third time. When we reached our first river crossing where you could not see the bottom on account of glacial silt, I tried to push him in, but he refused. “OK,” I answered, “You show me how.” He went 100 yards upstream and waded across water that barely made it up to my stirrups.

After that we ran into a bear or two, and something even more dangerous— a mamma moose. No problem. Twenty-three hours and fifty-five miles later, we appeared in the big window of the hunting lodge at lunchtime — and my reputation became such I could retire without ever winning a ribbon in a show ring.

My fourth printing was an experiment, uploaded January 1, 2000, of the scanned and OCR translated pages of a volume I had given a friend. What I had not realized until recently was it was full of mistakes. So, to wrap up this project properly, I have taken a new look at old problems, but have not touched what the base prices may be today.

Printing three had a $3.95 price on the cover. As I know the majority of my readers are young girls hoping to convince Daddy that buying just any affordable horse would not be a mistake, I am using this save-a-tree way to keep the price down. Using an inflation calculator that $3.95 today would be $13.95. We can do better than that, buying direct through PayPal, of a print-it-yourself download of $5.95.

May you always ride a GREAT horse!