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Through the Clarity Tunnel on Mule Woody — Riding the Caprock Canyons Trailway

Published October 3, 2004

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

I showed up in Estelline an hour before dark with 2 empty Very Fine juice bottles, a slack feed bag and two hungry horses. By night, I’d been donated a fifty pound bag of grain, two sacks of groceries, a gallon of water and a bottle of Gatorade, flavor blue. Thanks Rick and Sherry Manley.

I’d come to Estelline so I could get onto the Cap Rock Plateau. From Estelline, I was planning to take the Cap Rock trail up to the Cap Rock Plateau.

The Cap Rock State Park is part of the Rails to Trails program. The old rail line used to run 64 miles from Estelline, TX to South Plains, TX, atop the Cap Rock Plateau. When it became unprofitable, the tracks were taken up and the right-of-way converted to a hiking trail. Now hikers and horse back riders can climb onto the Cap Rock Plateau via grades gentle enough for those old steam engines.

This was a new sort of dry land. For the past days, Woody, Maggie and I had ridden along miles after miles of Texas cotton fields.

Cotton field with white bolls in Texas — Texas cotton. The white boles are the cotton part of the plant that will be harvested when the leaves turn dry.

Outside Estelline, it turned from cotton to something like out of a John Ford western – mesquite, dry grass and, occasionally, a cowboy.

Mule Woody standing in brush along the road near the Caprock Canyons — The land in transition: Woody standing in a patch of brush next to the road.

A cowboy working black angus cattle near the Caprock Canyons, Texas — A cowboy working black angus cattle. He did not ask us to help him.

The next morning I watered Woody and Maggie for the long dry stretch ahead. “Watered” being a relative term – they had a drink from a puddle because the only creek we walked by had turned to dust.

Woody and Maggie and I got on the Cap Rock Trail and walked west. The trail started out flat but slowly tilted up. The rise was gradual but my eyes followed it up to what looked like a red wall of cliffs on the horizon. We kept walking and, hours later, found ourselves in a whole new landscape – a land of soft eroded canyons that looked like something way farther west, like in the Dakotas.

Red rock canyon country along the Caprock Canyons Trailway, Texas — Woody and I wondered: could this really be Texas?

Palo Duro Canyon vista along the Caprock Canyons Trailway, Texas — Palo Duro Canyon vista.

Then the red ravines got larger and deeper, like something a giant would claw out of a chocolate velvet cake. The land got even drier. Earlier, when I had asked a rancher if we could find water along the way, he told me there would be watering stops along the way. I was thinking he was talking about creeks. Turned out he meant stock tanks. When I found them, they were dry.

By the second day, I was starting to worry – no water. And then, that evening, it rained, filling low spots in the road with beautiful, clear rain water. Woody and Maggie slurped it up and I dipped it up with the mug of my mess kit and poured it into my water bottles. It was perfectly clear and I told myself it was distilled water. Which it was. Going down my scratchy, dusty throat, it tasted better than the fanciest bottled water.

Rainwater collected in a puddle for Woody and Maggie to drink along the Caprock Canyons Trailway — A blessing from above just when we needed it. I couldn’t help but wonder if Maggie was thinking, “***Woody, should we be nervous that Bernie’s making us drink out of puddles?***“

The trail got steeper to the point that I wondered how a steam engine pulling a string of cars could have ever climbed it. The land turned redder and the eroded canyons deeper. We walked around a turn and instead of looping around the next hill with the contour, the trail went right into the side of the next hill. We had arrived at the Clarity Tunnel, one of only three railway tunnels ever built in Texas, bored through the Caprock back in 1927.

We walked closer and I saw a large white sign among the support beams at the tunnel’s entrance.

“Do not touch bats – alive or dead!” the sign warned. “PREGNANT WOMEN should use caution when walking in the tunnel area because of the risk of contracting toxoplasmosis… which can cause BIRTH DEFECTS to unborn children”.

I had no intention of gathering up bats – dead or alive – and I wasn’t pregnant, so I told Woody and Maggie, “Okay, guys. We gotta get through this.”

Woody and Maggie saw it differently. Here’s their side of the story.

More adventures by horse and mule: Travel by Horse and Mule.

More from the Too Proud to Ride a Cow voyage.

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