I was reading a book the other day (I know that sounds crazy and antiquated, but it’s something I do) and the author was describing walking in a mountainous forest through a valley and then looking down at a crystal-clear river. It was so vividly portrayed that, along with my own experiences in places like that, I was transported.
My parents owned some properties up in Angel Fire, New Mexico and during the warm weather months, we could escape the heat of Central and West Texas for the cool mountains with the clean air and beautiful peaks. I remember walking trails covered with pine needles and every color was extraordinarily vibrant. White stones in green clearings with sparkling, impossibly blue skies.
Only a few months later I was up there in the same area doing cold weather survival training and it was miserable. Nothing good about it. Snow deep and me shivering cold and my socks were damp sleeping with no tent (but I was doing ok,) and there were bears around so we had to hang our food from a tree branch. Lord knows if a bear gets hungry, we’d rather him just go at one of us than have to go to the bother of climbing a tree. A few days earlier when we were preparing, we had the radio on and the local news had the story of some campers being attacked by a bear. One of the campers was being attacked so the other, who had a shotgun, ran back to the car and started honking the horn to try and scare the bear away. I turned to the other guys and said, “Listen fellas, if a bear is eating me just go ahead and shoot in amongst us. I don’t mind if you hit me if I’m being eaten by a bear.”
Anyway, that cold-cold night was perfectly illustrative of why I don’t want to live in a place where it’s cold most of the year. One of the guys, a full-grown adult man, tapped out in the middle of the night and called for his mom to come pick him up at the trailhead because he was so cold, he thought he was going to die. What a miserable place to be in the winter. But that’s just my opinion.
One thing I learned by traveling so much in my 30s and 40s… every place has its pros and cons, its positives and negatives, its good seasons and bad seasons. Add to that the fact that we don’t all like the same things. Some people like cold and wet and overcast days most of the year. No idea why, but some people do. Some people like to be snowed in for 8 months and to have only 3-5 weeks of brilliant summer weather where gardens and plants shoot up to the sky almost overnight and produce flowers, fruit, or vegetables in the few days of blue skies and sunshine.
I know people who live out in the absolute desert where it is 110-plus degrees for most of the year, and those people are happy as clams. If clams liked the desert. Which they don’t. I mean, I never asked a clam, but I’m pretty sure they don’t like the desert.
Anyway, I love this time of year here in Central Texas. It’s a crapshoot (to use a gambling term.) In my social media “memories” I’m reminded of a year or two ago when it was 27 degrees on this date (‘feels like 15!’) This morning it is 67 degrees Fahrenheit and gorgeous. I like the variety.
Some people live their lives being miserable, and all they do is complain. They don’t live in a place that they like so they make everyone around them miserable too. Every place has them. Just get in a local social media news group and read the gripes. They complain about the sidewalks, the traffic, the weather, the crime, the bugs. Other people, living in the same place, can walk around and breathe in the clean air, see the leaves changing, be thankful for sunlight and nice days.
I’ve written about this before, but it all came back to me when Danielle and I were on a walk the other day. How nice is it to be able to walk around downtown and not be worried about crime, about garbage piled up on the street, about mentally unwell people defecating in alleyways and on street corners? I can’t imagine living somewhere I hate. Not for very long, at least. I read the other day about people who hate living in Texas, but still they live here. There are so many other places, it makes it hard for me to understand. Especially when everyone, everywhere is hiring.
From where I sit, we have it good here all around Central Texas. I like our day trips and I like our days right here too. I’ve been miserable before, a lot, and I can’t see adopting that as a regular way of life. If I find a desert clam I’ll ask him what he’s doing there, but until then I’ll assume he doesn’t exist.
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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear on Wednesdays and Sundays on the website.