A while back, about the time winter was thinking about getting serious, I did something I’d never done before: I got a flu shot.

Despite my mostly deserved reputation for tardiness, I was on a pretty good roll that morning. I had most of the feeding done by the time Mr. Sunshine finally eked his lazy head over the snowcapped peaks to the east.

A few years ago, I was asked to tag along on a trail ride in the great Owyhee country of southwestern Idaho with a few dozen state, county and federal officials and several distinguished members of the hierarchy of the Western cattle industry.

If you’re reading this, it means I just slipped in under the wire, not unlike the horses I’ve been chasing this morning – the same horses that were out a few nights ago at 10:30 p.m. when I was 20 miles away on my way back from a meeting in town.

I was right in the middle of a fairly precarious situation when I felt my phone buzzing in my shirt pocket.

The unrelenting early spring wind continued on. It was well into its third day of mercilessly tormenting me. Oh, it had slowed to about 15 mph, but now the gusts were accompanied by flurries of snow that whipped my face like the tail of a nervous colt recklessly slapping at a deer fly.

I brought the old pickup to a Smart Chick Olena sliding stop in front of the house. Any reiner who knows anything would have been impressed – had my mount been a blue roan instead of a beat-up old blue Chevy. To nobody’s surprise, I was running late again.

Back a decade or three ago, I took my first post-college job on a ranch in the wilds of White Pine County, Nevada. I spent a couple years there, and although it was a bona fide big cow outfit, it never attracted the big-time buckaroo types who tend to bounce from one Great Basin ranch to the next.

Back in pre-hysteria days, when we could freely watch a high school basketball game unhindered by the fetters of a crafty little virus, I made a short trip from my place to the hamlet of Murtaugh, Idaho, to scout a game involving a couple teams, one of which would be the opponent of my hometown Oakley Hornets in the next round of the conference tournament.

My wife loves to garden. As a matter of fact, she is a dang fine gardener, and she works irrationally hard at it and gladly shares the bounty of her hard work and harvest.