Distance Running Donkey Finds a Place in Politics
By Peter Anderson
Photo by Julie Berry
My old pal Curtis Imrie has been chasing ass —wild mountain ass— all over the Rockies for nigh on forty years. By the late-1970s, when we first met, he was already well-established on the burro racing circuit which, at that time, included races in the mountain towns of Leadville, Fairplay and Buena Vista (collectively known as burro racing’s Triple Crown).
The spectacle of burro racing is as much marathon as rodeo. A High-Country sport indigenous to Colorado, it involves twenty-some miles of mountain running more or less tethered to a burro who, in the best of scenarios might help pull you up a hill, and in less desirable situations, might plant all four hooves on the wrong side of a creek with every intention of staying put.
In a restless quest for some fresh adventure in the early-’80s, I decided to prepare for The Buena Vista Race, it being the easiest of the three at lower elevations and a length of only 24 miles, and at the time in my hometown. In order to train I needed a willing burro, and asked Curtis if he could help. “If you got the legs,” he said, “we’ll find the ass.”
Floating down Buena Vista’s main drag in a state of endorphin-fueled bliss some four-and-a-half hours after the starting gun, I knew that my burro wrassling/racing career had been a one-shot deal. Never before had the tried-and-true Buddhist method of sitting on one’s own ass seemed more reasonable and intuitive.
But Imrie, now 61, never left the circuit. As he got older and slower, he got craftier. After some years of racing with Equus asinus partners who had known only the relatively easy life of local pastures, he began to seek out wilder stock. Concurrently, the BLM adopt-a-burro programs in Arizona and Nevada — intended to clear wild and hungry burros off already sparsely vegetated federal lands — were offering feral jacks (male ass) and jennies (female ass) to anyone who would haul them away and feed them.
As Imrie put it, “My first truckload of wild burros started a deep and long respect for these alert, featherweight, agile, fleet creatures. My theory then and now is that the wild mammal is truer in overall soundness than all the over-bred, over trained, domestic critters. Call it a vitality — vitality we mess with at our peril in all walks of life.”
As it turned out, Imrie’s wild stock, most notably a 12-hand gray-brown jack named George Washington Hayduke, extended what otherwise might have been the over-the-hill part of his own racing career. He continued to place in the money, which helped to keep his asses and his own ass, fed, and found a burgeoning demand for reliable backcountry pack critters, as well as a growing interest in burro racing on the part of hot shot runners willing to wear a little shit on their Nikes.
While raising jacks and jennies, with forays into the world of showbiz (acting appearances in commercials, plays and movies), Curtis also eventually lit into politics (a homelier version of showbiz as he puts it), and tapped into the Democratic party as a symbol of his inner donkey.
When he announced his candidacy for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in 2000, the 5th District in 2002, and the 60th District house seat, which he sought in 2006, he did so with home-grown burros at his side. Though unsuccessful in each of his quixotic and low budget campaigns, his horse trailer signage placed at strategic mountain highway junctions spoke out for the conservation of wildness among other things.
Now Imrie’s love of donkeys, drama and democracy has come full trail. Mordecai, his seven-year-old donkey, was recently selected to be the official Democratic mascot at the upcoming convention in Denver.
“I think if the Democratic party can find its way,” Imrie was quoted as saying in the Rocky Mountain Nuisance, “the noble ass can help them find it. I like their strength, their patience, their work ethic, their hard-suffering attitude, and the fact that they promise a higher wisdom and great opportunity, if you can figure them out.”
According to Natalie Wyeth of the Democratic National Convention Committee, “it is expected that the donkey will make some appearances on behalf of the convention.” In the process, Imrie hopes Mordecai will emerge carrying “our great black prince onto the nomination.”
