When a farm accident stole the legs of a Minnesota pro snowmobiler, he had to relearn everything. Even his sport.

WINDOM, MINN. – It was minus 2 when Travis Muller lifted himself from the backyard hot tub, past his wheelchair and into the cold plunge. He sunk into the 42-degree water and yelped.

“I’m too much of a wuss to put my hands in too,” he said, holding his hands in the air.

The sun had risen over the rural Cottonwood County fields that Muller’s family has farmed for generations. Muller stayed submerged as long as possible on this frigid morning. The temperature contrast helped with muscle soreness and swelling where two healthy legs once were.

“The worst part now will be when I get done and get back in my wheelchair,” the 31-year-old said. “The handles (will) be frozen. My hands will stick to them. It’s so cold, but there’s no snow. So it’s pointless to be this cold.”

Muller typically is psyched for winter. Winter means snow, and snow means snowmobiling, and Muller was one of the best in the country. He’s done the X Games and Red Bull events, raced all over America and Europe. He’s won national finals on all three major snowmobile brands.

But his yard, with a snowmobile track, an embankment and a jump, was all brown grass. Without snow, a professional snocross rider cannot relearn the sport he loves — the sport that just 17 months ago was taken from him.

Up the gravel road stood 10 grain bins. From the cold plunge, Muller didn’t give them a glance; his grandparents bought the land in 1950, and the farmscape of corn and beans and endless skies has been the backdrop to Muller’s life.

He held no anger, not against the unfairness of his accident nor against this snowless winter. After all, he’d lived. There was a moment when he thought he wouldn’t.

He laid a towel on his wheelchair, water dripping to the ground and immediately freezing. He wheeled up a ramp and inside, energized, ready for a new day.

Muller rubbed a salve on his right leg, red and raw, his more troublesome limb. He stood on each prosthetic then hopped to squeeze out air and create a suction. He ambled to his garage and his toys: his Arctic Cat ZR 600 snowmobile, his bicycles, his electric Stark Varg dirt bike. There hung Muller’s snowmobiling mementoes, from trophies to action shots to jerseys with his number, 436.

Muller slid into a Can-Am Defender UTV and, using hand controls his dad installed, backed the side-by-side out. He steered to the scene of his gruesome farm accident. He’s a country boy, so no heavy emotions punctuated his tale, just facts.

It was September 2023, a regular Sunday. After church, Muller and his wife, Jasmine, took their young daughter for a bike ride. That afternoon, Muller fired up his Traeger smoker then climbed into the the grain bin to help his uncle and dad.

Two feet of corn filled the bottom. They turned on the sweep auger, a metal arm that moves grain to the center, and Muller shoveled grain away from the wall.

He’d replay this moment again and again, blaming himself: He should have been on the auger’s back side, not its front side. He should have paid more attention to how fast it moved.

Then...

“My mind blocked it out, and I’m glad,” Muller said. “My first thought was, ‘Why, God, did this happen?’ And I knew things would be very different.”

The auger had caught both legs, chewing one up to his thigh. His older brother shut it off. His uncle and dad used belts as tourniquets.

“Keep breathing!” one shouted.

“Keep your eyes open!” shouted another.

Neighbors and firefighters, police officers and EMS workers piled in, trying to pry him loose. Corn kernels lodged in Muller’s legs. His wife rushed from the house, horrified: “I visualized my life as a widow,” she said.

They unbolted the equipment, extracted his leg, then lifted him out with a tarp. It had been more than half an hour since the accident. Muller felt his body shutting down.

A helicopter flew Muller to New Ulm for a blood transfusion then North Memorial Health in the Twin Cities, where he underwent the first of many surgeries.

His left leg was amputated above the knee, his right leg below it. He was in the hospital nearly a month. Friends installed ramps at his house, reconfigured his bedroom and poured a sidewalk to the machine shop.

The right leg would keep giving him problems. He’d partially torn a tendon and lost flexion. A severed artery hampered blood supply. A debridement surgery to remove scar tissue failed. “That scar tissue was just a solid wall,” Muller said.

Back home, Muller was depressed. He’d been a busybody, never sitting still when he could get stuff done. He’d been skydiving; he’d scaled 100-foot jumps on his snowmobile. Now he was stuck in a wheelchair, waiting for wounds to heal so he could get prosthetic legs.

“There was about one month on the couch, sitting, saying, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t even do the dishes,‘” he said. “But I just kept thinking how I wanted to mountain bike again, how I wanted to snowmobile again.”

Muller thought of his grandpa, who’d worked until the last day of his life, passing away on his tractor at 92.

So Muller got back to work.

The hospital in Windom where Muller goes twice a week for physical therapy is a straight 10-mile shot on Highway 71 from the homestead.

He got his first prosthetics five months after the injury. He noticed a Lao Tzu quote at Limb Lab in Mankato: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” He started on parallel bars, hunched over and his butt sticking out. Then he used a walker. Then forearm crutches.

It was hard, but Muller has a professional athlete’s body awareness. Balance is key to snocross racing and his summer hobby of dirt bike racing, Muller said. He’d broken his big toe when he was young and was amazed how he learned a new equilibrium. Losing both legs is like that times a thousand.

By spring, he got back in the tractor for spring tillage: “I was finally able to feel like I was helping out, being productive, not feeling like a burden to everybody.”

He did seed-bed prep. He operated the rock-picking machine. He sprayed weeds. In fall, he ran the combine. Soon, he hopes to help his dad in the machine shop, though standing for long stretches is hard.

On a recent afternoon, Muller drove his Chevy pickup to physical therapy in Windom. Muller did 30 reps on a leg press and grimaced.

“Like a knife stabbing in your muscles, right?” said his physical therapist, Ike Pohlman. “You want it lighter?”

“No,” Muller said.

He did another set.

With each appointment, Muller’s range of motion improved. He worked on stepping up and down on a curb without support. His hamstring cramped. He kept going.

He doesn’t feel sorry for himself. He sees his prosthetics as work boots: “Just lace ‘em up.” He appreciates little things more, like being able to pick up his daughter, Shaylie. He can still do a lot, just a bit slower.

And he’s back to his hobbies.

“It’s too boring not to,” Muller said.

He got an e-mountain bike with magnetic pedals that attach to his prosthetics. He crashed on ice this winter but escaped with a bruised shoulder and a cool GoPro video. His dirt bike has hand controls; each time he rides, the pain decreases. He got his first running blades last week, and he’s thinking about competing in adaptive sports.

Competitive snowmobiling is another beast, all the bumps and jumps, all the sitting then standing. All winter, he was frustrated with his snowless yard, wondering when he could give it a go.

But a few weeks ago, he went to a buddy’s cabin near the Canadian border, his first snowmobiling trip since the accident. They rode nearly 500 miles over a night and two days. They sped along the river, on winding trails through trees, on Rainy Lake. S-curves were difficult, leaning from one side to the other, but it went better than he expected in the subzero temperatures. “My feet didn’t get cold, not at all,” he laughed.

His wife warned him about knowing his limits. He did, mostly, except on one open expanse of lake. There, he revved it to 88 miles per hour, as fast as the sled can go, and later his voice twinkled when he spoke of it. His daredevil hobbies didn’t injure him — farm work did.

Muller won’t race faster short-track races. But maybe he can race the cross-country circuit, where longer, flatter races require less leg strength. He’ll recreationally snowmobile next winter before making any decisions. He’ll definitely try dirt bike competitions.

He has crazier thoughts, too. Before the accident, he wanted to learn cross-country skiing. He doubts he can now.

“But,” he said, “you can do anything, I guess. If you want it enough.”