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Every story I have read by Elizabeth Letts has been amazing and this is one of her best. I highly recommend to readers who love true stories about brave women. Annie met some famous people and became famous herself, once her story was published as a human interest in local newspapers. She got numerous job offers and even an offer of marriage. It doesn't take long for people to notice this traveler, and the press sees a news worthy subject. So as she makes her way through snow, rain, and heat, over mountains and through prairies and cities, TV crews note her progress and spread the word. Consequently she doesn't camp out as often as she expected. Much of the time she sleeps in private homes, stables, motels, and jails. The police are very accommodating at watching over her. Her journey takes much longer because she is often stopped for interviews, requests for autographs, and invitations to various celebrations. In fact she becomes a national celebrity as she continues on her way, loaded down with letters from all over. Inspired by her late mother who would routinely say the family should quit the farm and head west to California, Annie longed to see the Pacific in her lifetime. Besides, how was she to “live restfully” trying to farm alone? Maine’s growing season was short and the weather unpredictable.
A true story, it shows how much our world has changed since this journey was undertaken. I assumed Annie would spend many nights in the elements, struggling to survive and likely miserable. In contrast, she spent very few nights this way, as the world set out to meet, greet, and treat her. She was provided with stables and corrals for her horses, a bed for herself, along with meals and warmth and companionship from families, law enforcement, and officials in the towns she passed through. She was asked to participate in parades, and became somewhat famous through newspaper articles informing the public of her progress. Her animals were as well treated as she was. She arrived in Redding CA in December 1955. After her trip to CA, she returned to her home state of Maine but instead of Minot, she moved in with her good friend in Whitefield Maine where she lived 24 years past her two-year prognosis. 12 years after returning home she was willing to turn her diary and photos into a book, “The Last of the Saddle Tramps.” A triumphant accomplishment from start to finish. Before she started traveling she lived on family property in Minot, Maine only a few miles from where she was born. Sadly, her health failed and she was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer (2 to 4 years left, they said). They offered her a place in a rest home. She was in her early sixties. She decided that was not how she wanted to spend the last years of her life. Instead she bought a horse, probably part Morgan, just before he was to be sent to a glue factory. She named him Tarzan and was determined to ride him across the country to California. Her dog would accompany them. Mesannie Wilkins (Annie) was 63 when her doctor told her she had 2 years to live. She’d just recovered from pneumonia when they found a spot on her lung. The doctor wasn’t sure if it was cancer or tuberculosis, but either way the prognosis wasn’t good.Author of: Last of the Saddle Tramps: One Woman's Seven Thousand Mile Equestrian Odyssey (Equestrian Travel Classics) Damn it all, she was going to see the Pacific Ocean for her mother if it was the last thing she did in this life. Knowing she was about to lose her family farm and with nowhere to turn for help, Annie Wilkins places an ad in the paper for a sturdy horse. After seeing a few, she knew she’d met the perfect match in an older Morgan she named Tarzan. Along with her spunky dog Depeche Toi, Annie hit the road. As a novelist ( Finding Dorothy, the most recent), history comes alive through Letts’ appealing, novelistic prose. In the telling of the realization of an against-all-odds dream of reaching California’s “land of sunshine” from a remote Maine farm by horse that took over a year, the book becomes more than one woman’s extraordinary tale to social and cultural commentary of an America at the cusp of sweeping changes.
In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn’t even have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness. Throughout the next months, as I spun the results of my research into a story, my own vista grew smaller. But Annie’s world got bigger and bigger as she traveled from the wooded confines of New England to the wide-open spaces of the West. And it seemed that the longer I stayed in my own home, the better I understood Annie. She was a single woman, short and square, working class and proud of it, divorced and with no children at a time when women were judged mostly by their relation to others—mother, wife, widow. Annie Wilkins never went anywhere or did much of anything except work in the kinds of jobs available to a woman with a sixth grade education. She was trapped in a life that was pretty much inevitable for her. She had no means of escape. A gift from a friend, this story chronicles the somewhat amazing journey of a single woman who rode a horse from Maine to California. One woman, one horse (although a second was eventually added), and one dog, determined to reach the Pacific Ocean after "Annie" was given the sad information she likely had limited time left to live. Ultimately, this is an inspiring story. Both Annie and Tarzan were living on borrowed time, but they both ended up living a life more exciting than either could have imagined. This was a heartwarming story of all the human spirit can accomplish with determination and guts. As I spun the results of my research into a story, my own vista grew smaller. But Annie’s world got bigger and bigger as she traveled to the wide-open spaces of the West.”
Unlimited digital access $11/month.
Some three thousand miles away, in Minot (pronounced MY-nut), Maine, it was four degrees Fahrenheit a
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