I spent a few days in March in Fort Worth, attending the Texas and Southwest Cattle Raisers Association annual convention. My traveling partner had an old friend who makes his home in Sunset, just outside of Decatur.

Punctuality is a highly prized trait in my world. The reason for its value is because of its rarity. It’s not that I don’t have good intentions, of course. I hate being late. But I’ve laid far too many bricks on the good intentions pathway. If it’s true about where that pathway leads, then I’m well on my way to a warmer climate.

Several years ago, we decided to change things up a little bit on our place. My dad was getting older, the kids were starting to leave home for college, and I was spending more time away from home. It seemed like the ideal time to cut back on the number of cows we were running to ease the stress, headaches and burdens that accompany calving time.

It’s nearly 200 miles from my place to Boise. I have no idea how many times I’ve made the round trip in my lifetime, but no doubt, it’s in the triple digits. It seems that most folks generally disdain a large share of the drive up I-84 for its perceived lack of beautiful scenery. The drive is sometimes compared to driving across Wyoming or Nevada.

Old Mother Nature can surely be a crafty old gal; just ask anyone in Texas and Oklahoma who suffers through a three-year drought twice a decade or the folks in Iowa, Illinois or Ohio who were trying to calve in 2 feet of snow last spring.

Like many small towns and communities in rural America, my hometown plays host to a raucous and reverent celebration every summer in honor of its earliest settlers and pioneer heritage.

I’m not a smoker. It never much appealed to me – on several fronts. For one thing, I don’t think I’m tough enough to pull it off. There is something to the old James Dean Hollywood stereotype. The image of John Wayne striking a match and lighting the cigarette hanging loosely from his upper lip carries a certain cachet with it.

My son is a senior in high school. Through 27 years of raising kids, I’ve discovered the path through the teenage years is fraught with peril for both parent and child. One of the latest perils we’ve faced is a book report for his honors English class on Charles Dickens’ classic tale, Great Expectations.

In the arid, high-desert country of the Great Basin, folks have learned to get by on not much more than hope, faith and a few acres of alkali ground covered with greasewood, sage and four-winged saltbush.

I was hustling home from Jerome one late afternoon a couple of weeks ago. I was a little irritated because I wanted to get home to get a horse shod before the sun went down. September irritates me anyway, because it brings with it the end of summer, the start of school, fewer daylight hours and colder nights.