I’m a magnet for non-paying volunteer jobs. And within those jobs, I seem to collect task after task for which I am not only severely underpaid, but as often as not, incredibly underqualified.

As we evolve and learn to deal with whatever life throws at us, our true character is shaped and defined.

By the time I got the horses moved and a crippled bull hauled to the sale on that Thursday morning, it was no longer Thursday morning.

Over the years, my passion for all things bovine, mixed with the opportunities I’ve had to write a story or two, have combined to lead me to cherished friendships with people across the entire country and spectrum of the cowboy and ranching world.

One late January day, as I was flaking hay off the truck to the horde of hungry bovines that surrounded and followed me, each cow acting as though she herself was entitled to every tiny stem and leaf, a strange dark figure on the fenceline a hundred yards in the distance caught my eye.

In keeping with tradition and, well, what most of us know, the talk usually circles around to calving season, haying season, crazy cows or stupid dogs. Livestock-related topics are always welcome.

When spring starts to springing and it feels like it’s May, the grass starts to growing and you quit feeding hay.

Like Yosemite Sam in a Saturday morning cartoon from the days of genuine quality animated TV programming, I sat on the ground for a few seconds as the stars and chirping birds circled around my head.

January was brutally cold. My home country had been blessed with some much-needed moisture in the form of several December and January snowstorms, and winter didn’t slow down in February.

As the bus rolled up to the high school gym on that cold, late-February Saturday night, I cracked my aching joints and unraveled myself from the nonexistent comforts of the third seat behind Russ, the ever-patient driver of Cassia County Joint School District bus number 9.