SEATTLE — More than half-way through his 2,000-mile horseback journey across the West, Mark Ryan stopped at Zeb Bell’s ranch outside a tiny town in southern Idaho.
“He just showed up at my back door; all of a sudden, there he was,” remembered Bell, a 61-year-old pro-rodeo announcer. “He introduced himself, and asked to just stay here for the night.
“It’s not the first time we’ve had someone like him,” Bell says.
Bell described Ryan as a long rider — someone who rides horseback for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles as part of a way of life that echoes an era long gone.
But to 46-year-old Ryan, riding across the West on his horse — Mister Doodles — to visit a friend provided a chance to see the country in a way not many other people do.
He left an impression on the dozens of people he met as he rode through seven states from Oklahoma to Washington.
“It’s part of life. You just kind of get an urge to do something before you get too old,” Ryan said. “There’s nothing like traveling 2 miles an hour.”
Hot roads, rattlesnakes
By his own reckoning, Ryan camped at dozens of different places, stayed with more than 60 people, and his horse and mule wore down almost 10 sets of shoes. He brought with him only maps and a mule, Festus — no global positioning system or even a cellphone.
At some places, Ryan said, he rode on highways where cars were an arm-length away from his horse. His border collie, Halfway, accompanied him until Kansas, where she blistered her feet on the hot pavement and had to be picked up by Ryan’s wife, Eva.
In Wyoming, there were prairies full of rattlesnakes. At one point in the Idaho backcountry, Ryan got lost for a full day.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal at first, but it was a lot of work,” Ryan said. “Some of them mountains, boy, it got cold.”
He left his hometown of Kingfisher, Okla., on June 2 and didn’t arrive at Ferndale, Wash., a small town about 20 miles south of the Canadian border, until mid-October. By that time, he had been on the road for almost five months.
“You can’t believe he actually did it,” said April Smith, one of the friends Ryan was visiting. “It’s kind of a John Wayne story.”
Outside Brush, Floyd Pickett helped Ryan get new shoes for Mister Doodles and Festus. The retired ranch foreman said a trip like Ryan’s takes a lot of guts.
“I’m 67 years old, and I always wanted to do it,” Pickett said.
By October, Ryan had reached the suburbs east of Seattle, which drew a sharp contrast from the backcountry that had been his home for months. He stayed with the Smiths for a few weeks, but because the weather was getting cold, Ryan decided not to ride back to Oklahoma. He looked for rides, but ended up buying an old truck, Eva Ryan said.
But the truck broke down in Oregon.
“He doesn’t have the money to buy another or fix the engine,” Eva Ryan said. “He’s waiting there for a ride. If he wants to ride back, he’ll have to wait till spring, wait until at least May.”
