Big Bend bids farewell to the burro lady

By STERRY BUTCHER

The burro lady, she’s gone.

Her name was Judy Ann Magers, though not many people called her that when they spoke of her. She and her succession of burros have been a part of the Big Bend landscape since the 1980s, and she died on the roadside in Sierra Blanca last Friday. She was 65.

“We all knew her, but didn’t know her,” Hudspeth County Judge Becky Dean Walker said this week. “She was something.”

Her home was the big lonesome. Alone with her burro, she roamed the bar ditches from Terlingua to Marfa and from Marathon to Sierra Blanca. She carried whatever she required on the back of the donkey, and he was ever-laden with a tangled heap of tarps, blankets, and plastic bags of belongings and trinkets. Her bearing in the saddle was very erect, almost regal, and the stately image was furthered by the burro’s majestically slow pace. A friend once told me that he called her La Reina, the queen. It’s what we called her in my household.

There were things, less tangible things, she carried that were heavier than cook pots and blankets. Magers rarely spoke. While she occasionally visited a little with friends about animals or saddles, she rejected most conversation, certainly with strangers, and rebuffed questions about who she was or where she came from. She traveled a singular path for reasons known only to her, and what secrets she had remained secret.

“She never would talk about her past to me,” recalled Bill Ivey. “Not much is known about her.”

Ivey came to know the burro lady in 1982, in her pre-burro days. He owned the Lajitas Trading Post at the time, and she simply arrived one day, camped in Colorado Canyon all by herself.

“I was fortunate to see her blossom,” Ivey said. “When she first came, she wouldn’t talk to anybody. It might take her 45 minutes to work up the courage to ask me for the groceries she wanted. For years, she wouldn’t talk to anyone but me, but over time, she became more trusting.”

Ivey was eventually named her legal guardian, and he helped keep track of her and the Social Security money she depended upon each month.

Magers moved to Lajitas, onto property owned by Ivey, after the Colorado Canyon camp she’d used for years became part of Big Bend Ranch State Park. It was during this time that she changed her name from Freeman to Magers, and again, no one knows why. She stayed around Lajitas for several years, and then, with the acquisition of her first burro, she became increasingly nomadic.

“She became very, very close to her burros,” Ivey said.

La Reina had a series of burros. What she asked of them was tough work, and she’d trade them out when they became too footsore to go on. Mouse-colored, chocolate, spotted – some lasted longer than others. Despite the rigors of the job, she and her animals appeared to develop deep, abiding relationships. Some years ago, she appeared driving a 1960’s model Cadillac. The back end of the car had been cut out somehow, and she would convince the burro to hop in and ride. Pass by them on the road to Valentine, and she’d be sacked out on a bedroll in the shade of the car; the burro still standing crazily in the Cadillac’s trunk.

Her travels brought her north, to Presidio, Marfa and Marathon. She was in Marfa the day Martha Stewart and her entourage were in town. Magers had tied the burro to a pole in front of the Chamberlain building downtown and gone inside the old Winn’s dimestore. I happened upon Martha and her crowd as they discovered the burro. La Reina, at that time, had developed a collection of plastic Pepsi bottles and metal spoons, and dozens of each hung off the burro’s pack. His lead rope that tied him to the pole was a line of flimsy bits of string pieced together; he could’ve decided to leave and walk away at any moment. Martha and her friends fingered the objects on his back and pet him and posed for pictures. I asked them to move on, and said that his owner wouldn’t appreciate them messing with the burro. Magers came hustling out of Winn’s at that very moment and set about untying her animal and getting him away in a fury. I tried to tell her that I was trying to help, but given the look she threw me, I’m not sure she understood.

It’s okay. Lots of people tried to help her over the years.

“Everyone I’ve talked to has a story about her and they’ve all watched after her,” said Ivey.

One person who looked out for the burro lady was Judge Walker, in Sierra Blanca. People commonly offered Magers charity – a place to stay, a bath, food or water for the burro – though she rarely accepted anything other than a lift from one place to another. Walker had rigged a 55-gallon drum of water outside her ranch gate for the burro. She told Magers about it.

“Oh you shouldn’t have done that,” Walker says the burro lady told her. “She’d water her donkey and leave change. If I didn’t pick up the change, she wouldn’t water the donkey until I took the change. She didn’t want to be a burden.”

Last Thursday she’d accepted a ride to a truckstop in Van Horn, where she showered to warm up. She refused an offer to go to the local shelter and on Friday morning, Magers and the burro were camped near the old Border Patrol station in Sierra Blanca. A sheriff’s deputy stopped by the camp.

“Occasionally we’d check on her and she’d get halfway irritated with us,” said Chief Deputy Mike Doyal. “She was a very independent person, to say the least. We made it a point to check on her Friday and she said she was fine.”

That afternoon, a friend of Judge Walker drove past Mager’s campsite and noticed she was putting on lip balm. A moment later, he turned back toward town and passed her again. She’d fallen and the driver rushed to her side and called 911. Help came within a minute, but she had passed away.

“She wasn’t alone when she died,” said the judge.

The burro lady is in a Fabens area funeral home while Ivey and others arrange for her burial. She was specific about the arrangements. She wanted to be buried at the cemetery in Terlingua, with her boots, hat and spurs on. Somehow, her hat and boots were not among her possessions in Sierra Blanca. Walker and Ivey will make sure that she gets some replacements.

The burro is at Walker’s ranch, receiving TLC, recuperating from a wound on his back and being plumped up with good feed. He’s grieving, she said.

“He cried for a day and a half,” said Walker. “I’d piled the blankets in his pen and he’d look under them for her, moaning. It makes you cry.”

A fund has been set up to help with burial expenses. Memorial donations can be sent to Judy Magers Memorial Fund, c/o St. Agnes Church, P.O. Box 295, Terlingua, Texas 79852. Attempts have also been made to contact a daughter who’s believed to live in South Dakota.

So fiercely independent, so careful to live on her own terms, the burro lady likely had no idea how much she was beloved.

“She was very well cared for by the community, yet everyone respected her privacy and didn’t pry,” said her old friend Bill Ivey. “She’s the most famous unknown person I’ve ever known. That’s part of what this area is about. You can come out here and be who you want to be.”