By Bill Lynam

Pick a clear day, bring your walking stick and gloves, a Global Positioning System (GPS) instrument, if you've got one, but it's not necessary, and head up the trail at Stricklin Park from the Butte Creek trail head. The start of the trail is on Sherwood Road, just one street west on Gurley Street past The Hassayampa Village turn off. The Cowboy's Prayer awaits you at the top of the trail.

You cross Butte Creek by jumping over it or walking a plank across a breached dam. This puts you on a right-of-way trail through the Hassayampa properties and next to Butte Creek. The trail is well marked with brown vertical trail signs at every turn. In the first part of the journey you thread your way along an easy up-and-down trail between boulders and the edge of the Hassayampa golf course. It's a gentle climb as you pick your way between the granite boulders, the cat's claw, juniper and manzanita sprinkled along the trail. Your path is a stone's throw and even closer at times to the elegant homes built into the rugged terrain. 

Walking at an easy pace, you should reach the swing gate that demarcates Hassayampa Village from the Prescott National Forest. The barbed-wire fence points to the Cowboy's Prayer down into Butte Creek. But don't go that way; stay on the trail through the gate. Not far up the path you'll start to see cairns or small rock piles that indicate places where you can divert from the trail and head down to the creek to find the Prayer. 

Look for the rock piles and listen for the waterfalls. The Prayer is located above the waterfalls but below the relatively flat stream portion above the falls. Of course the season will dictate how much water is flowing and whether you can hear the falls. 

The Prayer is located in the middle of Butte Creek and can be approached over the granite boulders that line the creek when there is not too much run off. A GPS might help you locate it. My hiking companion and GPS guru, Ken Reynolds, gave us a reading of: 34° 32.144' N, and 112 31.053 W at an elevation of 5848 feet. 

Chiseled lightly into the lichen-covered granite boulder in mid-stream are the words: 

"I LET MY SADDLE FALL 
MY WEARY HORSE I TEND 
DEAR LORD I HEAR YOU CALL 
FOR I'VE REACHED THE END". 

This bit of verse would be considered graffiti in the city but in the National Forest it has taken on the reverence of a prayer. However, a prayer usually addresses God entreating or imploring for something. As Al Bates noted in April 2000 in his essay on the Prayer for Sharlot Hall, "it is more of a lament, that is, a crying out or complaint." Whatever the stanzas suggest, the Prayer/Lament is an interesting destination if you like hiking. 

The author of the poem is unknown as is the vintage of its chiseling, though Mr. Bates suggests, "it was done a long time ago." From his research, he thought the "old timers in the area think they remember it going back to the 1930's or 1940's but can't be certain." 

Mr. Bates mentions one unlikely story he heard that says it has something to do with the silent film movie star, Tom Mix, who lived and made movies in Prescott. In researching an article on Tom Mix previously published here, I would suggest Tom was too busy writing screenplays for the movies he acted in (one-and two-reeler silent films), attending to his five serial marriages, orchestrating his posse of movie cowboys, locally hiring Indians and running a herd of cattle he kept on the Bar-Circle-A ranch (which is now the Yavapai Hills). I believe he was too busy making movies for the company he worked for, Selig Polychrome, from 1912 until 1917, instead of picking up a hammer and chisel and sitting in the middle of a cold stream. 

Also, the prayer is unsigned. I know Tom would never have left his work nameless. This one is perhaps worthy of un-signing. Most cowboy poets I'm familiar with do a much finer job of metrics than this example. 

Still, this is a great one-half day hike and if you find the prayer, you can come to your own conclusion. You get a nice bit of exercise going to and fro and you get to discover a local enigma. 

The round trip on the Butte Creek Trail is about 2.5 miles and the elevation rise from the Sherwood Road take off point, which is at an elevation of 5540 feet, is only slightly over 300 feet to the Prayer. 

(Bill Lynam is an archives volunteer at the Sharlot Hall Museum.) 

No photograph available.