Last Friday morning the phone rang and a woman said she had a news story. The enthusiasm in her voice sprinted from stirring to exhilarating in 90 easy seconds. She filled my head with information and a request that felt more like a bequest.
I drove to her farm near the Berryville airport that evening, not sure what to expect but heartened, roused, pumped up by what she had told me. The farm was easy to find.
Pam Floyd, the woman who called, introduced herself then said, “This is Jake Harvath.” His handshake felt like a wool blanket – rough, warm and safe.
His eyes reminded me of tumbleweeds with the taproot still in. Earthy. Lively. His face was deep red, like a winter sunset.
The Floyd farm rolls. A pond next to the house is a sanctuary for birds and peepers. I had met Larkin, Pam’s husband, 25 years earlier when I covered the airport commission meetings. He’s a pilot who said he’d rather ride horses.
We each said some sentences, but Jake was watching the sky, the weather, the little black starlings starting to nest. He turned his head toward horses.
“Come on,” he told me. “Let’s go feed.”
We headed down a dirt road and back up to a corral where three mustangs vied for position to greet him.
Jake Harvath is a horse trainer and a farrier. He adopted and trained three mustangs, Bella (16), Eddy (12), and Denver (8), for a walkabout that he started 137 days ago.
“Bella’s the lead mare,” Jake said. “She makes the decisions and Eddy and Denver carry them out. She hears things first. She looks after them, they protect her.”
The four of them left Heber City, Utah, on September 25 and are headed to New Jersey, where they’ll turn around and walk back to California, then home to Utah. The 7000-mile outing is expected to take a every bit of a year at 20 miles a day. “I’m going to know people twenty miles apart in every part of this country,” Jake chuckled.
Who is this man? Like all the great ones, he’s simple and complex, strong and tender.
Jake Harvath turned 24 last November 21. On his birthday he was in Raton, New Mexico, and had a bed for the night in Trinidad, Colorado. His innkeepers said we’re only 21 miles away, “You can be here in half an hour.”
He said, “I’m not in a horse trailer, I’m on a horse. I’ll go ahead and bed down here at the fairgrounds.”
Shortly after his horses were unpacked, brushed, fed, and tethered to 25-ft. ropes tied to 2-ft. stakes, a pickup drove into the fairgrounds. The Trinidad couple scheduled to put Jake and his three horses up for the night turned off their engine. They had brought alfalfa for the horses, and hot food and a birthday cupcake for Jake.
What is Jake Harvath doing and why?
The plight of the mustang has been documented for years. They live in harsh conditions where there isn’t enough grass to sustain them, and they have no natural predators. So their numbers increase, but public rangeland is used primarily for cattle, depriving them of grass.
“I want people to know about mustangs,” he said. “Mustangs are like deer. They’re bred by nature, have strong feet, and very few health issues until there’s not enough to eat.”
“They’re hybrid, non-native horses with a mixture of many bloodlines. They were brought to this country by the Spanish. Pioneers frequently settled when they ran out of money and energy, then abandoned horses they couldn’t afford to feed. Those native horses bred with mustangs, so what we have today is about 80,000 mustangs looking for something to eat.”
Mustangs are called wild, but they’re technically feral. Feral means they are domestic animals, ones that relate to humans, but due to circumstances have been tossed out to live in the wild. Wild animals want to avoid humans.
The U.S. government wrangles 50 to 60 thousand mustangs each year and puts them into pens until they get adopted or die.
A mustang adoption costs about $150 and proof that you can care for it. Eight thousand mustangs were adopted last year.
What is Jake Harvath like?
Jake started planning this trip when he was 16. He planned his route and supplies, became proficient at videoing for social media, and trained as a farrier so he could replace horseshoes. He studied climate and highways and laws. He worked as a horse trainer. He planned finances and haircuts, knowing neither was really practical.
He said he asked God about making this trip and God answered, “Make up your own mind.”
Jake’s felt hat made me think outback buckaroo, Mexican vaquero or Mormon missionary. Simple, black, sturdy. A hat that provides shade and saves the skin.
Jake prefers round-toe boots and said they’re getting hard to find. “Tractor Supply?” I asked. “Boot Barn,” he answered.
“What kind of pocketknife do you carry?”
He stood up and reached around to his back at the belt line. He had a cowboy sheath positioned at an angle so it wouldn’t snag when he got in the saddle. He unsheathed the knife and handed it to me. Mule deer bone handle and an individually forged blade. He had made his own knife.
What does he eat and drink?
He likes steak. He cooks steak on the trail and buys it in a café when he can. And water, he drinks a lot of water.
“Do people honk and wave when they see you?”
“Oh sure,” he laughed. “I’ve never had alcohol or any drug, You’d be amazed at how many drivers stop and offer me a beer.”
Because of social media and the tight network of horse lovers, he is frequently offered a place for the night. He gets a meal and a bed, his horses get a pasture.
Jake packs the horses by feel so they carry within a pound of each other. Each horse carries about 180 pounds all day. Jake, his boots, hat, pocketknife and essentials weigh in at 180. He has a spare pair of boots and jeans, a winter coat, a couple of cleanest dirty shirts, a bedroll. Mostly he packs supplemental food for the four of them.
Packing is all about being humane to the animal, not setting it off balance or having any part of the saddle rub wrong. The most important thing is that the pack saddle fit the horse like a shoe would fit us. It just has to be right.
The thing is, Jake created his own job and figured out how to meet expenses doing it. His mom has a background in social media and his dad works in financial interests, so he started with a pocketful of possibility. Because of social media, people have sent scouts out to find him and offer him a bed and a pasture days in advance of his arrival.
His longest daily walk was 35 miles before he came upon Fox Creek, Colorado, an unincorporated town in a dramatic canyon in the San Juan Mountains surrounded by the Rio Grande National Forest and Bureau of Land Management public lands. They had to travel down to the town.
“It was dark, snowing, windy, desolate. We had nowhere to go, and we had to get to where there was help. Downhill is the slowest.”
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