The fall of 2016 was an extraordinary season in the stretch of country in south-central Idaho that I call home. After a dry summer, where we saw nary a drop of rain from the first of June through September, the heavens opened and we got nearly a year’s worth of moisture in the months of October and November.

With the advent of the new year, it’s nothing new to see and hear, ad nauseam, about how seemingly everyone is ridding themselves of old bad habits, turning over new leaves, starting fresh and generally being inspired to rise above their lesser selves to become something better than they were in the past 12 months.

I grew up in a rural area. There were six little towns in the south end of the county. The kids who lived in those six towns all attended the same schools. Kindergarten through sixth grade attended the elementary school, and seventh through 12 grade attended the high school.

 By I’ve traveled around the country a fair amount in the last few years. I’m not on the road every week, but I’ve been around enough to develop a certain taste for where I choose to lay my weary head at night when I’m in Denver or Fort Worth, Missoula or Salmon.

There are a lot of things I love about fall. I could go all cliché on you and talk about the changing of the seasons, the chill in the air and the beautiful colors of the fall foliage. And, to be honest, those things all play a role in how I feel about the season.

Sometimes I have a tough time figuring out exactly what I should write in a column. This time of year, however, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to deciding on a topic. The challenge is in trying to present a fresh perspective on a topic that may have been written about and discussed ad nauseam.

I hold some allegiances to various creeds, ideologies, people and sports teams. The strength of my allegiance varies according to the cause. I know plenty of guys who live or die by the color of their tractors and their cows or the letters on the tailgate of their pickups.

In my world, early fall is usually a season full of optimism and hope. It’s a time when I find it easy to cast my gaze forward to a bright future on the near horizon.

Given my weak resistance to any sort of peer pressure, it truly is a wonder that I haven’t ended up as a strung-out junkie spending his days in and out of county jail.

It’s been several years since I paid someone else to shoe my horses. That’s a chore I always do for myself. The main reasons for this are twofold: because I’m cheap and because I can.