Illustration of a large, smiling donkey's face with a cityscape and mountains in the background. The donkey is incorporated into a colorful desert scene with flowers, and the image is overlaid on a desert highway at night. Text reads '51 Beast of Burden' with a Route 66 sign.

51     BEAST OF BURDEN   

KEY CONCEPTS:  stubbornness, steadfastness, simplicity, perseverance, humility, burden, escape.

 MESSAGE:  The burros of modern-day Oatman, Arizona, managed to escape the gross drudgery of their ancestors’ lives.  When a miner struck gold in 1863, the hamlet boomed overnight, with a goldrush holding strong until 1941.  World War II saw Oatman dry up and blow away.  After many years of labor, remaining animals were abandoned to meager prospects when mines closed.  Forsaken in the Mojave Desert they subsisted by foraging jagged peaks for sparse grasses and shrubs.  They soldiered it out thusly for twenty years or so, carefully dodging jumping cholla and the occasional big-horn sheep.

Each burro stands firm in his actions; these stubborn fellas never let anyone tell them how to think or act.  Are you belaboring arguments?  Don’t get stuck in the mud defending yourself--why give a sluice what some prospector thinks?  Like the donkeys, feel free to identify a pickaxe as a pickaxe, or call a spade a spade.  The only opinion you ever need consider is that of the Infinite.  Spirit graces even the humblest of creatures; simplicity doesn’t imply insignificance.  Why not surrender your burdens to the source?  Rest in being as you roam the desert hills, for the more you do, do, do, the more you’re in do-do.  

Beasts of Burden are famed for determination and resilience...but you’d never hear them braying about it.  Practicing compassion in action, these sturdy critters steadfastly supply help to those carrying loads too heavy to bear solo.  When we love our neighbors through acts of service we honor the Infinite. Humility isn’t self-deprecation, it’s rather an accurate self-assessment we acquire when we dissolve our insolent ego. 

Perseverance finally paid off for them in the early 1960’s, when the bypassed ghost town shapeshifted into a tourist trap.  Once-scarce visitors began flocking to the vacated village; burros’ fortunes boomed when eager day-trippers provided a mother lode of tasty snacks to sample.  Today, descendants of hard-luck mining donkeys meander downhill to freely wander uneven streets.  They liberally welcome the good life: all their hard work finally panned out.

RELATED SITES:  WILD BURROS OF OATMAN, AZ; MULE TRADING POST, ROLLA, MO.