The HIll country was certainly a welcome sight after driving all day and night to avoid the icy storms hitting Minnesota that signalled the beginning of those 6 months of frozen oblivion.
Although it was a bittersweet tour, we mourned the life of my father while trying to figure-out how in the hell people survive the below-freezing half-of-the-year reality. I grew-up there and miss it still, but the reminders that life was a struggle to protect one's extremities assured me that I made the right choice 25 years ago, but here where we have tolerable Winters, even 70-degree days after a rare frozen evening before...we don't have real lakes, hiking paths, dirt a few feet deep, and the Northern lights that connect us more closer to the prospect that we're only a speck of life in a much larger universe surrounding us.
Here we're Texans. Larger than reality and winners of the war between the States (they think so). Our trucks are bigger and guns shoot further, the women slimmer and beer frothier.
To be continued.....
