It is the annual Cowboy Poets Gathering here in Alpine and this seemed a fitting image. When we first arrived here a little over twenty years ago we attended and tried to enjoy all the local events.

But, I missed the cowboy gene and jeans. I am more a cargo pants kind of guy. I have never owned a horse. I have to admit I wouldn’t know how to saddle one if I had one.

Kind of embarrassing for a guy who grew up in West Tx (Odessa). As a youngster I always dressed like a cowboy, albeit  never knowing why.  We moved to Dallas when I was in the seventh grade, after one day at Bowie Jr Hi, I came home and announced to my mom that “we had to go shoppin’ “. Cowboy attire was just not for those that couldn’t defend why they dressed that way. My billy the kid & wrangler jeans and snap button cowboy yoked shirts all had to go to Goodwill.

As I friend here in Alpine fittingly told me ” I don’t dress like these people, I don’t look like people,and I don’t think like these people and I never read a Zane Grey novelle” That seemed fitting and I quit trying to be like these people. Hell, I even vote democrat, there I said it.

I do enjoy the views though. I even enjoy the mystic of the old West and try to capture it through the vision of my camera just not my clothes or trying to be something that I am not.

Enjoy who you are! en theos ††† jim