On one group MATC trip, where we built over two years a lean-to in Frye Notch on the west slope of Baldpate, I observed a MATC ‘father' show his temper when his chainsaw wouldn't work. He slammed it down and broke it in two.

It was on that trip I learned to be a mule.

This chainsaw abuse brought us a bit of relief from the weariness of work at Carl A. Newhall's expense. I learned from it too. I learned I didn't want to lug a chainsaw up a mountainside and have always kept a bowsaw for that purpose instead. I also learned not to let my irritation ruin that bowsaw or other tools.

Buy Carl was a keeper. He did so much for MATC, the AT, and the outdoor world in general there now is a Carl A. Newhall lean-to along the AT in the 100-Mile Wilderness. I sometimes wonder if today's hikers camping at that lean-to have any idea of the greatness associated with its name.

In the first year of that Frye Notch project, I learned how to be a mule. While my fourth-grade teacher had known that much earlier, I had to learn it by doing -- the best way to learn. Using Carl's and other chainsaws and bowsaws, we cut suitable trees for the construction of the shelter. The first year we peeled them so they wouldn't rot. And we lugged these trees to the construction site.

No pickups were present, nor Caterpillars, nor anything on wheels. Six of us lugged those trees by suspending three ropes along their lengths and each of us grabbing and end of a rope and hefting before stumbling downhill carrying the stripped tree trunk to the site.

Several of us wondered why we would become mules as volunteers, when we would never become such drudges in our paid jobs.

In my elevated opinion of myself, I've never been a mule since, despite my fourth-grade teacher's insistence that being a mule would pretty much define any career aspirations I might pick up while plodding through life.

Baby-sitting a half dozen horses was the reward for my maintaining a section of trail for the town of South Paris. The trail contained a fair amount of mud, because most of its users were horseback riders from the Paris Hill neighborhood. I thoroughly enjoying getting out in that woods barely 200 yards from where I lived.

One of the trail's users and I became friends, so it was reasonable that when she went on a trip she would ask me to baby-sit her horses. Also, I owed her a bit, as she allowed me to keep my chainsaw and other tools in her barn directly across the road from the trail system.

Off she went on her trip, and off I went a couple of times a day to let the horses out and feed them. In doing that, I became entangled in the typical horses-love-the-trail-volunteer-who-feeds-them syndrome

I would take a pail of grain into the paddock, and all six would charge me. Once or twice I nearly became part of a neighborhood brawl among the horses to see who could be the first to knock the bucket out of my hands.

Seeing them bare their teeth and charge into each other made me glad that while I may have been considered a mule by my fourth-grade teacher, I was not a horse -- especially one of those horses.

I've never been bitten by a horse, but my first wife was bitten by a pony -- way back in Pennsylvania where horses and ponies were supposed to be more cultured and gentle than those in the woods of South Paris, Maine. We'd stopped the car to get out and admire this pony stallion, and she began to make cooing sounds at how cute he was.

But while she was doing that, leaning on the fence, he was trotting closer and closer to her with his ears laid back. She wasn't listening to me that day any more than she did during the latter years of our marriage, and Pony Boy pinched her palm as she attempted to be friendly.

I've always preferred horses over ponies, even when considered a mule.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.