The view from the saddle

ROSALIA, Wash. – Like all good horsemen, Gene Glasscock has a story about his hat.

“I got this hat in Pierce, Colorado,” the 70-year-old Glasscock says, referring to the slumping, weather-softened felt fastened to his head. “I had a straw hat when I started out, and about two days into it, the thing went sailing out into the gentle breeze of Colorado, over a barbed-wire fence …”

It was an inauspicious start to Glasscock’s attempt to ride by horseback between every state capital in the lower 48 states – a saddle-bound journey of more than 20,000 miles.

But soon enough, a high school rodeo rider along the trail donated the gray felt cowboy hat. It’s been with Glasscock ever since, to 38 state capitals, through wind and rain and three falls and the occasional bout of the flu.

He has ridden roughly 18-20 miles a day since leaving Denver in September 2002, with just one break: two weeks in Roseburg, Ore., for a hernia operation. He rode east to the coast, down to Florida and across the South and Southwest before heading up the West Coast to Washington state. He hopes to conclude his ride at Columbus, Ohio, before December.

“Just because you’re a senior citizen doesn’t mean you have to sit down in a rocking chair and rock yourself to death,” Glasscock said Thursday. “You can still follow dreams.”

Glasscock’s dream involves helping street children in Paraguay, where he works as a missionary and teacher for an Independent Baptist church. On his ride, he’s attempting to publicize a scholarship fund for Paraguayan students, as well as mark another achievement in equestrian travel.

It’s not his first such trip. In 1984, Glasscock set out on a journey of more than 12,000 miles, from the Arctic Circle in Canada to the equator in Ecuador. He’s still the only person to make that ride, according to the Long Riders Guild, and it earned him a mention in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

On his current trip, he’s following in the hoofprints of another group of long riders – four men from Shelton, Wash., who made the journey from 1912 to 1915 and earned the name The Overland Westerners. They braved treacherous river crossings, snowed-in mountain passes and the constant threat of hunger.

“Got to the snow line at 5 a.m. and then the fun began, although it was better than we anticipated having frozen some the night before,” wrote George Beck of one Cascade Mountain passage, according to the Long Riders Guild. “It held us up pretty well. But the horses went through to their belly once in a while. … I thought once we would never make her but a fellow can do more than he thinks he can if he makes up his mind and we made up our minds to go through or bust.”

Things are a little different these days. Glasscock and his four horses – Frank, George, Tossie and Traveler’s Buddy – negotiate the paved world a lot of the time, though they’re following trails as much as possible.

They’re relying on a network of long riders and others around the country, who provide places to stay and other help. Thursday night he stopped in Rosalia, and he was set to spend Friday night in Tekoa, just a short ride away.

“He’s stayed with people who are really rich and they’ve had him sleep in their barn,” said Gayle Gerber of Tabernacle, N.J. “And he’s stayed with people who are dirt poor and they slept on the floor so he could have the bed.”

Gerber had never heard of Glasscock before he came riding toward Trenton in September 2003. Her son, who ran a feed store, met Glasscock and offered him a night’s lodging at his mother’s house.

“When I got home from work that day, there he sat, in the recliner,” she said.

Gerber became hooked on Glasscock’s personality and his journey, and she eventually became his trip coordinator.

In each state, he rides to the state capitol building, meets with dignitaries – Washington Lt. Gov. Brad Owen climbed aboard Frank two weeks ago in Olympia – and then heads for the next one.

Along the way, he’s taken three falls, and was pinned under his horse each time. He’s had the flu a couple of times, and the hernia operation. “I was in the hospital one day in, I can’t remember the name of the town, Utah.”

He’s stayed with families all around the country, and has pitched his sleeping bag on the ground a few times, too. He says the best part of his journey is meeting all the people along the way. He has six children and 39 grandchildren, but he’s been single for years and doesn’t want to say why. Each day, he saddles up and spends hours alone on the trail.

“I make up songs, I think about the kids in Paraguay, sometimes I pray,” he said. “Sometimes I just look at the country.”

And with him every step of the way are Frank, George, Tossie and Buddy – and the gray cowboy hat that’s losing its shape under the onslaught of the elements.

“It was a pretty nice hat,” he says, “when it started out.”