Oklahoma native Sean Herren rides his horse Odyssey while his other horse, Storm, follows him along U.S. Highway 69 near Mineola on Tuesday. Herren is on his way to the Gulf of Mexico from the Oklahoma-Kanas line. (Jordan Green/Longview News-Journal Photo)

MINEOLA — Most horsepower along the highways these days is created in a steel engine block, where fuel and fire fuse and combust to let drivers race from one place to another.

But in his months-long trek along the highways and byways of Oklahoma and East Texas, Sean Herren has relied on the kind of horse power that needs alfalfa, sweet feed, a saddle and some tender, loving care. Since leaving his home in northern Oklahoma in October, he’s ridden his trusty steed, Odyssey, with the horse’s sister, Storm, carrying supplies at his side.

The two Tennessee Walker horses are fittingly named. An odyssey is a long, arduous journey. And while a storm could refer to the weather, it better represents any number of painful challenges a human must endure.

Herren knows what it’s like to be on a long journey somewhere, and he’s spent his life fighting an uncommon battle: the results of a childhood electrocution that left him with half an arm.

When he was 2 years old, Herren was at the clothing manufacturing company where his parents worked in his hometown of Blackwell, Oklahoma. Herren saw a gap in a fence surrounding three electrical transformers and crawled inside. He placed both of his hands on the transformers, and the back of his head touched an electrical wire.

Herren’s right arm had to be amputated, and the electrocution destroyed most of his muscles, nerves and growth plates in his left arm. What he has for an arm is disfigured, deformed — but not useless.

Herren smiles, laughs, walks and rides on nevertheless. Since he left his home in October, he’s moseyed south through the Sooner State and the Lone Star State. He’s well on his way to the Gulf of Mexico, and he’ll pass through Tyler this week.

Why would a man with half an arm and two horses take off on a months-long, hundreds-of-miles-long trek to a place he’s never been before? As he told a woman he met at a gas station along the way, the answer is simple: “God.”

‘Figure out a way to do it’

The sun shone down Tuesday morning along U.S. 69 south of Mineola. Trees cloaked in autumn colors lined the highway as cars zipped by. Meanwhile, in the grassy right-of-way along the southbound lanes, a contemporary-looking cowboy on horseback had started his day’s journey.

Leaving from the Mineola Nature Preserve that morning, Herren traveled to Lindale, a span of about 12 miles. He made pretty good time, too. By about 3:45, he was sitting in a café about two miles out of town, talking with a newfound friend — only the latest he’s made along the way.

People have come out of the woodwork — literally and figuratively — to help Herren. Strangers passing him on the highway have offered to let him rest at their properties and given him, and his horses, water.

“I’ve met some amazing people,” he said. “It’s as if, every time you go into a town, the most amazing person comes out to meet you. And so there’s also just been wild experiences.”

Some of those “wild experiences,” in Herren’s eyes, are spiritual. He’s a former youth pastor and aspiring missionary, and he sees his journey as a ministry.

As Herren stood beside the highway, Odyssey and Storm grazed, occasionally nudging Herren to remind him they wouldn’t stand still forever. They wanted to keep moving.

He didn’t begin planning the trip until July, but the groundwork for it was laid six years ago.

“So, I’ve always had, like, a gut feeling, I guess, to hear God,” Herren said. “I went and sat on a John Deere tractor, and I knew I was supposed to buy it, and I had no reason to buy it — a brand new one.”

Soon, Herren found himself getting hired to mow brush, move rock and perform other tasks requiring a bucket, brush-hog and box blade. He figured out how to operate it — how he could operate it, that is.

He put extensions on the levers that control the movement of the bucket on the front and the large mower on the back so that he could control them with his left arm. The tractor also has a hydrostatic transmission; in simple terms, that means it has separate pedals that allow the tractor to move forward and backward without shifting gears.

“You kind of figure out a way to do it or manipulate multiple levers with the same arm at the same time, like steer with your elbow and do loader with your fingers,” he said.

Then, he said, God told him to get a horse. Enter Odyssey. But Herren was afraid at first. How would he, with only half an arm, train a horse?

“I started studying a lot about the mind of a horse,” Herren said. “I just got him, and I just started taking little baby steps to figure out how I was going to hold the rope while holding a training stick at the same time — how I was going to hold the reins and all that.”

It was only another instance in which he’s learned to adapt and improvise.

A grim prognosis

Herren was 16 days into his second year on this earth when he was electrocuted. He spent four months in the hospital and endured 40 surgeries. Doctors weren’t holding out hope for him.

The prognosis was this: “I had to have brain damage. … I would never probably walk or talk again. I’d never have a job, never have a normal life. I was going to probably be a vegetable or close to a vegetable the rest of my life, because the brain damage would have to be so severe,” he said.

Herren proved them wrong — though not effortlessly. An IQ test later revealed that he’s near the genius level, he said. That gave him great motivation to move toward his dreams — but not the ease of acquisition to fulfill them.

“Life was this continuous physical challenge. It never ended,” he said. “When you’re 2, you’re still figuring out how to do things. And then I had to learn how to re-walk, because my body weight’s different.”

Everything — everything — in the life of someone missing just one limb is different, not to mention missing two. Merely one example: Herren can’t grip a spoon or fork. Rather, he had to learn to scoop up objects such as utensils.

Physical challenges, though, were only a part of the struggle. In school, Herren was bullied relentlessly. But he’d been through enough of a mental battle that he wasn’t “emotionally rocked” by the incessant, almost daily, jeers of his peers.

Learning Taekwondo helped, too. He learned that he had a strong roundhouse kick. Because he’s missing part of his left arm, the bone he has is more exposed and packs a heavier punch.

“When I got into Taekwondo and started learning to fight, that was pretty much the end of being bullied,” he said.

It was the start of something else. At age 17, Herren was competing against national champions and beating them. He “kept pushing and pushing,” he said.

Two years earlier, he nearly stopped.

‘I just kept talking to God’

Despite his mental and intestinal fortitude, life was discouraging. Depressing, rather. At the age of 15 — keep in mind, after years of being bullied and living a life unlike most others — Herren decided to end his life. He had a rifle.

“I stared at this rifle for two hours just thinking, you know, is there anything left? You know, before I make that decision you can’t go back on. You know, anything before I go that I need to do or write down or whatever?” Herren said. “And so I thought, ‘You know, what if — what if I’m wrong, and God does love me? I was like, you know, what if? What if I was really wrong, and I end it all and, like, it’s all gone? It’s all over with? There’s no going back.’

“I told God, ‘I hate — I hate You.’ I screamed it every day at the top of my lungs — ‘I hate You.’ And so I kept talking to Him, because I was like, ‘I want to talk to Him every day for two weeks, and then I’m gonna shoot myself. I’m gonna end it all.’”

But something else happened. At first, talking to God was like talking to a “brick wall,” Herren said. But he began to feel something: “Somebody was listening to me.” He kept talking to God — past the two-week timeframe he gave himself. Then he began to feel as though someone was in the room with him — all the time.

Before he began that season of prayer, “everybody would describe me as a sphere of hatred,” he said. “And I turned into what people now would say is like a sphere of love. I mean, I wanted to kill people I never met before, and now I’m willing to die for people I’ve never met before, and so my whole life is transformed. And I just kept talking to God every day and never ended.”

‘Become somebody better’

There’s more to Herren’s story than could be told here. He had such severe ADHD that he couldn’t carry on an adult conversation, he said. The childhood trauma he endured plagued him for years.

Would he carry it further?

“My childhood told me, ‘Get over that and become somebody better,’” he said.

In the ensuring years, Herren, now 35, began pursuing “intellectual truth and knowledge and stuff,” he said. And he undertook what he called “personal growth” challenges: long-distance shooting, long-distance running, flying airplanes and, of course, riding horses.

In July, a father and his sons riding horses across the country stopped in Blackwell. The family’s ride is called “L and L Manquest,” and the men are documenting their journey online. Herren met them and asked: “Are you guys out of your mind?”

But that’s when he felt God tell him: “Go.”

“I mean, honestly, I just went because God told me to go, and I kind of was looking forward to riding the horse,” he said.

Herren left from the Oklahoma-Kansas line, a few miles north of his hometown, on Oct. 14. His original goal was to cross the Red River into Texas and call it quits. But then, the trip got a little longer.

He’s slept in rodeo arenas, tents and houses. On an early leg of the trip, he spent the night in a field when the air was 32 degrees, and he had no sleeping bag. He regrets that, he said.

The most challenging part of the trip was about a week later. Someone smoking marijuana blew a puff into his horses’ nostrils.

The journey went to pot from there. Storm, who is saddled with supplies, tripped and rolled, ripping the pack saddle off and destroying Herren’s gear, he wrote in a Facebook post. But a woman living in the area let Herren corral his horses on their property and let him stay in her camper; another woman took him to the local cowboy church. That’s where he ran into an old friend who happened to be a leather smith and fixed Herren’s saddle that night. Herren was back on the road again soon.

Just as he’s received help, he believes he’s given some to others. At a gas station, a woman walked up to Herren to ask him why he was riding. When he gave her his reply — “God” — she wept. Right before she met Herren, she and another woman were sitting in a car together, “and they were praying that God would send a sign that He loves her because she was so broken at that moment,” Herren said.

“And she gets out of the car and sees a man with two horses and saying he’s crossing the country because of God, starts telling his testimony about how He changed his life,” Herren said. “She broke in half — I mean, emotionally.

“There’s just been so much love of people walking up to me and hugging me and crying, saying that you changed my life and you inspired me.”

Herren will end his journey in Winnie near the Gulf Coast, and he’ll let his horses run along the beach when he gets there. He expects to be there in the coming weeks. Thanks to the help of a friend, he’s got a TikTok channel called “America’s Amputee” where folks can follow along vicariously.

This journey, like his life’s journey, hasn’t been easy. But believes he’s gained a lot from the trials he’s endured.

He’s gotten to where he is today — figuratively and literally — by taking one small step at a time.

“That’s what everybody’s afraid of, is like looking at the big picture and trying to overcome it and how they’re going to take it on, instead of just taking that tiny little baby step and moving forward,” Herren said. “And it’s like, what more can you do than start moving and moving your feet?”

Well, for one thing, folks could put some hooves beneath their feet.