A life in the saddle
Baden Whitehead leaves his horse Osage in the parking lot of Bad Ass Coffee as he enters the store on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2010, in Santa Rosa.
BETH SCHLANKER/ PDPublished: Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 3:12 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 3:12 p.m.
That's no Mustang, Bronco or Colt that often occupies a parking space smack in front of a coffeehouse near the Wells Fargo Center.
It's Osage, a blue-eyed mare that waits patiently at the curb while her cowboy savors a cup of mud and fields a stream of questions from passersby: What kind of horse is she? (Tennessee Walker) How old is she? (8) And what brings the two of them to Sonoma County and to Bad Ass Coffee?
That last question can't be answered in a snap. But on this day, horseman Baden Whitehead — a chef by trade who lived a citified life with his family in Florida until a drunken driver took nearly everything from him — had a bit of free time.
“I've been through 24 states on a horse,” said the amiable, barber-shy vagabond. He was dressed the way he evidently always does, in dusty jeans with a silver buckle on his belt and a sizable knife hanging from it, boots with spurs, gloves tucked into a rear pocket, vest, kerchief, weathered Stetson.
He said he really didn't know where he was headed when he saddled a predecessor of Osage and rode out of West Palm Beach in 1998 — 12 years and thousands of horseback miles ago.
“The next thing I know, I was in Georgia. I've been going ever since,” the wiry, 50-year-old Whitehead said from a table on the sidewalk in front of the coffeehouse. He wasn't sitting outdoors to keep an eye on Osage. The well-tended, brown-and-white mare never stepped beyond the white lines of the parking space. Whitehead was outside so he could have a smoke if need be.
Thinking back to the start of his cross-country ride, he said he heard about the Appalachian Trail in Georgia and took it all the way to Maine. From New England he turned west, riding off-road when possible, and occasionally using his rifle or pistol to hunt for dinner. Often when he and Osage are on the move they travel the shoulders of highways, roads and city streets and he keeps his firearms unloaded.
“I'll do 30 miles a day,” he said. “I try not to do any more that.”
And he stops — sometimes for a day or two, sometimes for a year or more — to earn some money by cooking, wrangling or making himself helpful at a guest ranch or working at a ski resort.
But why did he leave Florida on a horse in the first place?
Whitehead said his life was clipping along until the abrupt stop came in 1997. He'd grown up riding horses in Palm Beach County, he said, gone into the Air Force at 18 and served six years, mostly as a military policeman, then used his veterans benefits to get trained as a chef. He took a job at a restaurant.
That terrible day in ‘97, he said, he was driving near his home with his wife and their 4-year-old son when a drunken driver ran a stop sign and plowed into their car.
“I woke up three days after the accident in a traction bed,” he said. He was informed both his wife and son were killed and he'd been thrown through the windshield.
While he recovered, he said, he lost his job and his home. There weren't many good days following the crash, but on one of the better ones he struggled back into the saddle.
“I've lost a lot of things in my life,” he said, “but I've never given up on my horses.”
One day in 1998 he bridled the horse he owned at the time, strapped on a small rolled-up tent, some clothes and the few other possessions he could carry and he rode out of Florida.
“I've found life is a whole lot simpler” since hitting the trail, he said. One of the benefit of living on a horse: “I don't have to worry about so much to lose.”
For 12 years, he's slept often under the stars and seen about half the country from a rare, old-fashioned, close-to-the-ground perspective. He admits, “There are some lonely times and nights out there.”
Whitehead would bring back his family if he could, but since he can't he satisfies himself with the life he's made. He's making ends meet on his veteran's benefits and enough earnings to maintain himself and keep Osage fed, healthy and well-shod.
At the moment he's working and living at Santa Rosa's Cloverleaf Ranch, the 63-year-old working ranch and summer camp just down Old Redwood Highway from what's become his favorite coffee spot.
Ranch owner Shawna DeGrange likes having the man and his horse around. “He's just stepped back in time,” she said.
DeGrange, whose grandparents opened Cloverleaf in 1947, said it seems to her that Whitehead has pared back his life to simple elements such as appreciating and treading lightly on nature, caring for a horse, relying on himself and dealing respectfully with others.
“He's a very kind person,” she said. “He enjoys the (cowboy) image a bit, but he's really not out to prove anything.”
DeGrange hopes Whitehead will stay around to work the kids' camps next summer. He's most amenable to that. He said he's in no rush to move on from Santa Rosa, though he will one day.
With 24 states under his belt, he's got it in his head to ride through all 50. He knows Alaska will be a push and Hawaii will take some serious pondering.
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