Page
1
| Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4
This is Page 1 of 4 of Bernie & Mule
Woody
Bernie
Harberts is traveling again. And once again, he’s made
Oriental his starting point
.
Last May, the Statesville, NC resident completed a 4-1/2 year
circumnavigation of the world where he’d begun –
at the Town Dock.
On St. Patrick’s Day Bernie left from the Town Dock on
another trip. But instead of “Seabird”, the steel
cutter he’d taken around the world, Bernie this time is
traveling with Woody, a 15-year old mule.
| 
Bernie
Harberts starts another journey at the Town Dock.
|
He says
that he hopes to travel across NC over the next 2-3 months.
Bernie says he is making this trip because “it was time
to catch up, see what’s changed” in the state he’d
been away from for almost 5 years.
Some inspiration for this trip came last May just after he wrapped
up his circumnavigation.
“On my drive back home from the sailboat to Statesville
where I live, I came by a big truck of cotton bales. The covers
on the bales were in Spanish, above the English and I thought
‘My God, what’s happened since I’ve been gone?’”
|
|
There were
other changes. “The racetrack in Southern Pines where
I won one of my first races (as a steeplechase jockey) has been
completely built over. It’s gone.”
Now Bernie is on his latest journey.
Bernie says there is “no real organized itinerary,”
but he has sketched out a route that would take him and Woody
from Oriental to the mountains of Lenoir in Caldwell County
by way of Beaufort, Southern Pines, Salisbury, and Statesville.
He estimates he and Woody will do 5-10 mile days and that it
could take 2-3 months to cover the 400+ miles.
So why travel with a mule??
“I think it’s in the eye.” Bernie says. “It
has that deep-sea eye of whales and warm-blooded deep-sea animals.”
“And the oversize ears. There’s just a tremendous
draw to that.”
| 
Woody
in a "Mr. Ed" like pose. This mule is hard not
to like.
|
Bernie
has worked with other equines -- as a steeplechase jockey in
NC and VA and as a horse trainer and buyer as he made his way
around the world. He suggests that mules though, have something
over horses.
“Mules are tougher, heartier, and they eat less, drink
less, and are usually healthier than horses. And they’re
pretty cheap, which on this voyage, I need.”
As for how one goes about finding a mule for such a trip, “it
helps,” Bernie says, “to go to John’s BBQ
in Southern Pines.”
| 
Woody
grazes across from the Neuse River. (Ben Casey photo)
|
Through
“friends of friends of friends” he learned of a
mule on a farm near Louisburg that had started life on an Amish
farm in Pennsylvania. In more recent years, the mule had been
giving rides to tourists and their children in NC. It was in
Louisburg, outside of Raleigh. And that’s where Bernie
met Woody.
>>>Mule
Woody - Click for Page 2
