Mountains, Muffins, and the Horse Whisper

Mountains, Muffins, and the Horse Whisper

If you’ve ever seen one of those sweeping drone shots in a movie—gliding over snow-crusted peaks, panning closer and closer to what looks like a tiny dot moving along a ridgeline—you know the kind—then you can probably picture how we looked. Just a few dots in the white wilderness of Montana, crawling on all fours, snowshoes askew, prayers whispered through chapped lips.

How did we end up like a bunch of half-frozen dots on a mountainside?

It all started the night before, in the dead of winter, when four young men in their twenties found themselves stark naked in a cedar hot tub, deep in the Montana woods. The tub was heated with real logs, crackling beneath the surface like buried treasure, and the steam rose around us like ghost stories waiting to be told. It would’ve been serene, almost cinematic, if not for the moment James’s dad—a lean, grizzled man with an unsettling comfort in his own skin—ambled out of the cabin, stripped down without hesitation, and slid into the tub with the practiced ease of a man who once lived in a teepee.

No one said a word. We all just stared into the steam, trying not to make eye contact. That was the first warning.

The next morning, we packed up snowshoes and gear to hike toward the old family cabin James’s parents had built when he was a kid. They’d lived in a teepee while it was being built, which should’ve told us everything we needed to know about what we were getting into.

I’d never snowshoed before. Didn’t know that strapping what looked like tennis rackets to your feet could actually keep you afloat in snow deeper than your ego. It was awkward at first, and hilarious, until we realized that the snow was waist-high off the trail. That’s when you start to respect the racket-shoes. That’s also when you start wondering if dying in the mountains would be poetic or just incredibly dumb.

The cabin, when we reached it, looked like something out of a folklore book—no electricity, no plumbing, only firelight and the smell of old cedar. We stoked the stove, dried our socks, and filled the place with laughter and the warmth of good friends and better flannel.

Then came the hike.

What was supposed to be a short, scenic snowshoe trek turned into an alpine misadventure. Around noon, the snow started to fall. By one, it was falling sideways. By two, we were inside a full-blown whiteout, and James—bless him—insisted he knew the way.

“All we have to do is go up this hill,” he said.

That “hill” turned out to be a mountain. And not the chill kind. No, this one had layers, cliffs, and moods. By the time I hit the halfway point, the claws on my snowshoes had frozen stiff. I couldn’t grip anything. I was reduced to crawling, muttering motivational phrases like, “You’re not gonna die here,” and “Next time, just book a hotel.”

But eventually, miraculously, we made it back to the cabin.

That’s when we saw him: Nate Berhausen. A man of considerable size, wearing nothing but an apron clearly designed for someone half his width and two cheerful mittens. He was pulling muffins out of the oven with the poise of a domestic saint. The cabin smelled of cinnamon and redemption.

“You boys look like warmed-over tragedy,” he said, handing each of us a muffin like a communion wafer.

It was then that Michael earned his nickname. Nate, ever the observer, pointed out that whenever Michael was deep in thought—like, philosophical-deep—he’d chew the side of his tongue, slowly and rhythmically, like a horse ruminating over Aristotle.

“Henceforth,” Nate declared, “you shall be known as The Horse Whisperer.”

The name stuck. Funnier still, Michael, who was valedictorian at his university and had once considered law school, went on to become a bona fide horse trainer in Oregon. He lives in a yurt now and teaches mindfulness to miniature ponies.

As for me, I’ve never snowshoed again. But every time I see a drone shot panning through the mountains, I smile. Somewhere, out there, a dot is crawling through the snow, trying not to die, and wondering if there’s a big man in an apron waiting with muffins at the end of it all.

And I hope there is.Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.