hike the NatioNal parks

Draco strains against the leash. He’s got his front legs
splayed, his back arched and horns held stiffly high,
his coin-slot eye staring me down. I can tell what he’s
thinking: Keep pulling that rope, pal.
Clay Zimmerman, the man who rented me Draco
and his comrades, Lunar and Eclipse, told me that I’d
be communicating with the goats by the end of the trip.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t what he meant.
I take a half-step toward Draco, then lean backward
into the leash right on the “boy” of “That’s a good boy,
Draco!” Draco shuffles his hind legs forward. And rests
on his knees. I drop the leash and sit on a rock, removing
my carefully chosen beige hat to sponge off some
sweat. “You’d think I was leading the damn thing to
slaughter,” I say to Julia, my companion. She lowers her
camera (goat-struggle shot number 6,000) and looks
at me. I don’t have to wonder what she’s thinking. “It’s
time,” she says.
Time for the spray bottle, she means. Clay had
warned me against this tactic. In fact, during the whole
three-hour orientation he gave me, this was pretty
much the only thing he said not to do. “To be clear,” I’d
said, because clarity on this seemed important, “can I
use the spray bottle for motivation?”
“Absolutely not,” was his quick answer. “Only for
discipline.”
By this point on day two, we should be 10-plus miles
into a 50-mile trek along the Highline Trail in Utah’s
High Uinta Wilderness, but we’re still within sniffing
distance of the trailhead, and I’m pretty sure the goats
know it. I’m pretty sure they think if they hold out a little
longer, maybe they can bring the whole thing down.
Certainly they’re making a good go at it. My attempts
to move the pack string so far have escalated like the
verbiage on overdue bills. Sunny enthusiasm gave way
to bribery (I’d tried enticing them forward a few feet at
a time by dangling treats in front of them—and went
through the whole bag of alfalfa pellets in 20 minutes
and 20 yards). Then came the plead-and-pull. The goats
just chewed their cuds. Totally poker-faced. “The damn
things are stonewalling me,” I said, maybe to no one. “They don’t even respect
the hat.” (More on that later.)
“I’ve got a new idea,” I’d said to Julia about an hour earlier in almost the exact
same spot. “The goats seemed scared of the dark last night. They really hung
close to us in camp, right? Maybe if we try to night-hike them, they’ll be too
scared not to follow.” Julia encouraged the plan in such a way
that I could tell she thought it sucked. The ideas were getting
worse. The goats, too. At every chance they got, they’d aboutface
and hike the other direction. Draco always in the lead.
Draco. At 185 pounds, with splotches of black, white, and beige
and a long white stripe running down his nose, he’s the runt of
this pack string. Lunar, the largest, outweighs him by 30 pounds,
and Eclipse sits somewhere in the middle. Draco stands aloof
from the group, exuding annoyance at the amateurishness of
all this. I’m thinking he’s the alpha. I’m thinking there’s no better
way to change their minds about who’s in charge than to depose
the apparent leader. I’m thinking, Casey Lyons, beastmaster.
But when I attempt to put Draco in his place by hauling him
into the lead, past Lunar and Eclipse, Lunar lowers his head and
gives him the horns, sending me crashing through a stand of
saplings to avoid getting gored. I make a go at Lunar, but moving
him is like trying to push-start a tank.
Our options are exhausted now—except for the one. Julia’s
been lobbying for the spray bottle for an hour, but up to this
point I’ve been reluctant to break Clay’s one rule. And then, sitting
trailside on that rock, I experience one of those moments
of profound, trip-saving clarity. “What if,” I say to Julia, standing
and placing my hat back on my head. “What if, instead of spraying
them to get them motivated, we use the bottle to discipline
their bad behavior?”
“Okay...”
“Which is being unmotivated.”
“I like where this is going.”
We choose Eclipse, who always seems to be hiding behind
something. Julia switches the spray bottle to stream and holds
the nozzle a millimeter from his snout. When I pull and he
doesn’t come, she bellows forth a bird-scattering “No!” and gives
him the business.
It’s like someone shot him out of a cannon.
LET ME JUST SAY that hiking with goats wasn’t always on my
radar. I’d always been interested in the animals, in a spectacle,
watch-it-eat-a-tin-can kind of way. But when I heard about goatpacking,
I had visions of myself skipping through flowery, alpine
fields with just a daypack while a loyal and proud goat followed
me like, well, a dog. A dog
with a beard and horns. So
basically a demon dog. But,
you know, friendly.
Nights, my new goat friend Clockwise from top: Eclipse
would lie by the campfire showing his winning form at
and I’d lean against him and tug of war. Goats are surefooted
on- and off-trail, once
snack on goat cheese produced
by one of his many off-
Reports of goats’ stubborn-
you manage to get them going.
spring. Something —definitely ness are not overstated, much
not mutton—sizzling on a spit. to our author’s dismay.
After dinner, I’d produce my
pan flute, and play ancient
songs under the bowl of
stars—fertility songs, or something
about Dionysus and wine, maybe.
And since I am a sucker for wine, cheese, and easy hiking, I
was a prime candidate for goatpacking. But don’t think it’s out
of (pure) laziness. I once schlepped 60 pounds of water and a
birthday cake into Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park
after the others I was with had weight-related meltdowns. That
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