By Ryan Smith
MEADVILLE, Pa. — Everybody has a dream. Lee the Horse Logger’s has been to drive a horse-drawn wagon across the country, visiting with old friends, meeting new ones and furthering his real-world education along the way.
And with the mental clarity about what really matters in life that often comes with a diagnosis of cancer, he’s decided to let go of the things he considers trivial and follow that dream to its end.
After being diagnosed with lymphoma in 2005, the 46-year-old sold his Montana timber ranch, dropped his last name and planned to set forth on an authentic wagon trip from there to Boston, accompanied only by his team of two horses and two pet dogs — the “four musketeers.”
Expecting to reach his destination by early July, the Horse Logger recently passed through Crawford County en route to New York state. So far, he’s covered more than 2,200 miles, chronicling the entire trip — now in its 10th month — on his Web site, www.leehorselogger.com. Following a much-needed rest in Boston, during which he plans to visit his childhood sweetheart, he said he’ll set off to Alabama, California and Alaska.
“We’re all due for a very major break,” he told the Tribune as he and his team, all visibly worn, weary and admittedly not in the best of moods, traveled their way along Irish Road near Edinboro. “We’re just trying to get through this leg of the trip as quickly and safely as we can.”
He said what’s made the trip through northwestern Pennsylvania difficult is the landscape’s abundance of steep hills. Being unfamiliar with the geography of many of the areas he’s traveling through, he relies on locals for routing advice and suggestions on where he and the team may safely spend the night. In many instances, he said the side-of-the-road stops often make for new friendships, as people are more than willing to talk and often offer further assistance in the way of food or money for the team’s necessities of life.
“There are a lot of good people in the world — good people you never hear about” in the news, he said, adding he started the trip last August from East Glacier, Mont., with only $75 and a couple of weeks’ worth of food.
He’s since been able to maintain the wagon and his and the team’s health and well-being with the help of numerous gifts and donations. “I graciously accept them, but I don’t ask for them,” he said. “People just offer. That’s the amazing thing to me — it’s not just Montanans,” with whom, he said, kindness and charity is a way of life. “It’s still alive in a lot of parts of the country.
“People help because they want to,” he said, “and because I’m doing something that a lot of people want to do.”
By that, he said he doesn’t necessarily mean trekking cross-country on a horse-drawn wagon. He means following the dream, whatever it may be, before it’s too late.
“Here we are on this trip, doing things I want to do instead of just working and beating my head against the wall,” he said. It’s not as though “you have to dream something wild up. Get off your butt and do what your heart tells you.”
Ryan Smith writes for The Meadville (Pa.) Tribune.
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Learn more
To read more about Lee the Horse Logger, and to track his progress and find out how you can help as he travels cross-country on his horse-drawn wagon, visit www.leehorselogger.com.
