Gentle readers, how would you describe that “down home easy feeling?” I reckon that some of us might describe it somewhat different than others but it most likely has something to do with how we have lived our lives.

A person that lives close to the ocean might refer to sitting on the beach when the sun is almost down and listening to the waves lap at the shore.

If you live in the mountains you might give credit to a full moon above the trees and just a whisper of breeze drifting through the pines.

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To a cowboy, it’s the finish to a really hard day, but a satisfying feeling that all was accomplished and part of it done on the back of a really good and willing horse.

“We had no idea the challenges, hardships, joy and heartache that lay spread out before us in the years of adulthood to come.”

I think most of us could just go back in our childhood and think of moments when we really weren’t aware of what life was going to be like for us. We had no idea the challenges, hardships, joy and heartache that lay spread out before us in the years of adulthood to come.

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I have a photo of my older brother and I sitting on the dresser in my bedroom. It was taken when we were 10 and 9 years of age or very close to that. We had such peaceful, satisfied glint of joy and hope in our eyes and our big smiles reflected so.

Had we known what all we would encounter in our lives over the next 60 or so years, you might have seen a different expression on our youthful faces. Life has been good to us and we have been blessed but we both have had difficult, trying and very sad times in our lives.

I also have a photo of “Little Miss Martha” and I sitting on a split-rail fence at cow camp high up in the Rockies above Ridgway, Colo., with that “down home easy feeling” expressed on our faces even though we were new to such an environment as that.

I would bet ya that you could get that feeling just having your kids or maybe your dog just crawl up in your lap for comfort and love.

I have to touch on our world today. This world of fast, faster and fastest. A world of a bountiful, exciting, sometimes concerning new technologies that could either make us more comfortable or destroy us altogether at some time in the future.

There is just so much of it I don’t understand. What I do understand is that when we don’t take the time to look one another in the eye and connect as one human being to another and prefer to look into the magic box and use our thumbs to create words we should be speaking. We are cheating not only ourselves but those we care about.

You see that type of behavior constantly everywhere you go, but there are ways to find that “down home peaceful feeling.” It might require us to give ourselves the opportunity to really relax and reflect on who we are, where we have been and where we expect to be. Somewhere in there I know that “feeling” will be present.

The mornings are cool and I know fall is just around the corner here in the Rocky Mountain west and I will be ready for that first snowfall when it comes. The bikers are all headed to Sturgis, S.D. There is still hay to be put away and a new season will begin.

Stay tuned, check yer cinch on occasion and remember to be nice to your enemies, it drives them crazy. Also, remember a friend is someone who could tell you all of his troubles, but he doesn’t. I’ll c. y’all, all y’all.❖