fiction

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Back to the Ranch

My grandfather was sixty-six when I was born at Mission City Hospital in 1956. The hospital was small, but it was just right for our little town of Mission, Texas. I wasn’t his first grandchild, but I was the only one who lived nearby.


By the time I was born, my grandfather had already lived in Mission for over forty-five years. He worked as a real estate developer, served on the Mission City Council, led Boy Scouts Troop 20, and as a Notary Public helped many people in the community.


Yet, throughout all his years in Mission, he never forgot his roots on the family ranch in Duval County. He maintained a lifelong love for the outdoors and returned to the ranch every year to hunt or ride his horse. Although he had left the ranch many years earlier, the ranch had never left him. It remained a part of his heart.

He wrote in his journal about how much he loved ranch life. Here’s part of what he wrote:

Returning to the ranch proper at the end of the day, you feel hungry and ready to eat. Your appetite is plentiful, and by nine o’clock you are already in bed and so sweetly tired that nothing can perturb the quietness of your nerves. The breeze on the east porch where I slept was an ideal location.

Trips of this kind were better than medicine. Your feelings are better served and the next day you have a desire to work vigorously.

And so time was consumed in these routines of ranch life. What a wonderful method of passing your time.


My grandfather shared many stories about life on the ranch. Reflecting on those stories helped me understand how the ranch shaped him. Ranch life helped him develop a strong work ethic and become someone who never complained and always tried to help others.


I also admired how he kept his love for the outdoors and adventure all his life. From his childhood to his later years, the ranch was like good medicine for him. He often talked about riding horses, hunting, and even stretching barbed-wire fences. I was always fascinated.

After my first visit to the ranch, I tried to go back as often as possible. I found that the ranch had the same effect on me as it did on my grandfather. Most importantly, each visit made me feel closer to him. Since the ranch was special to him, it became special to me too.

I feel the same way whenever I visit our off-grid place in Big Bend. When I’m there, my mind feels calmer, my heart feels stronger, and the desert air refreshes me. Time seems to slow down. The hard work is satisfying, sleep comes easily, and life’s routines feel simpler and more meaningful.

Now I understand what my grandfather meant. Places like these truly are better than medicine. Whenever I go back to our little spot in the Chihuahuan Desert, it feels like I’m returning to the ranch and to him.

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Visiting El Frijolillo

My grandfather was a storyteller. From as early as I can remember, he shared wonderful stories with me—stories that made my imagination sit up and pay attention. I loved listening as he told Aesop’s fables, the story of Androcles and the Lion, and other fascinating tales. This was during an age when television was still in its infancy and storytelling remained a treasured form of entertainment.

But the stories I loved most were those he told about his childhood growing up on a ranch in Duval County. To this day, Duval County remains rugged scrub country, populated by mesquite, cactus, and other stubborn vegetation seemingly determined to stick, cut, and wound the unsuspecting traveler.

As a boy, I was captivated by his stories of riding horseback across the ranch. During his teenage years, he worked as a cowhand on the George West Ranch, located not far from his family’s ranch. His stories made me want to be a cowboy, just as he had been before leaving ranch life behind to attend business college in San Antonio.

One day, he told me about being thrown from his horse at a place he called El Frijolillo (pronounced free-ho-lee-oh). He described it as a thick, tangled cowlick of mountain laurel and chaparral at one end of a pasture. The fall was apparently memorable enough to remain vivid in his mind decades later. As a boy, I often dreamed about that mysterious place called El Frijolillo.


When I was barely a teenager, my grandfather arranged for me to visit my country cousins at the ranch. He bought me a bus ticket from Mission to San Diego and sent me off on a great adventure—all by myself, with only a small suitcase in hand.

The only thing I remember about the bus ride was sitting next to an older woman who had doused herself in an overpowering amount of perfume. I could hardly breathe and pressed my face against the window, hoping for even the slightest whiff of fresh air. Toxic fumes aside, I made it to my destination, where my Uncle Florentino, my grandfather’s half-brother, was waiting to pick me up.

Florentino was a towering man. When I stepped off the bus, there he stood—wearing khaki pants, a long-sleeved shirt, black boots, and a straw cowboy hat. He looked down at me with welcoming eyes, shook my hand, took my bag, and led me to his pickup truck for the nearly twenty-mile drive to the ranch. That day marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Florentino.

I told Florentino that while I was at the ranch, I wanted to see El Frijolillo. He laughed and remarked that this was the very place where a horse had violently bucked my grandfather to the ground. Then he assured me that I would indeed get to see El Frijolillo—on horseback. I grinned from ear to ear and could hardly wait.

My cousins made sure that I experienced plenty of great adventures. They took me rabbit hunting, led me on hikes through the brush, climbed with me into deer blinds to survey the land, and introduced me to horseback riding. I killed my first rabbit, and my aunt cooked it for supper that very evening. Unbelievable! This adventure was already more than I had expected.


But the greatest adventure of all was riding a pony out to El Frijolillo, the place that had etched itself into my grandfather’s memory decades earlier. For whatever reason, he never forgot that fall—perhaps because being thrown from a horse was a rare occurrence, or because the impact had bruised itself so deeply into his memory.

I was there. Finally. As I surveyed the place, I could hear my grandfather’s story echoing in my mind. Standing on that very ground made me feel even more connected to him and to the ranch land that had nurtured him. This was part of my history—and now I had become part of the story of El Frijolillo.

Decades have passed since my great adventure on the ranch. When my grandfather told me stories about life on the ranch, he unwittingly gave me a wonderful gift. He gave me a connection to the land and to my family. Best of all, he gave me a connection to the boy he once was. Now, whenever I think about El Frijolillo, I can hear my grandfather’s voice and feel inspired to keep the storytelling tradition he shared with me alive.

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Boys Need Adventure

One of the highlights of the year for me is hosting an outdoor adventure retreat for boys from the Brookshire community. For the past several years, Cheryl and I have hosted this Spring Break retreat at our off-grid property outside of Big Bend National Park. Watching the boys enjoy and learn from these adventures is one of the best things ever.

A few months ago, my nephew Ryan Rogers and I were talking about how God has used the Big Bend retreat to allow boys and their mentors to build deeper bonds. In our conversation, we talked about giving the boys a new opportunity to spend time with their mentors in the great outdoors.

Encouraged by what he heard, Ryan offered to host a shooting retreat at Flat Creek Ranch in Dimmit County. The sprawling 2,100+ acre ranch offers amazing opportunities for boys to experience the great outdoors in one of the most rugged settings in the Lone Star State.


My friend Dennis Turnipseed, the executive director of Eyes On Me, a ministry that works in some of the toughest communities in the greater Houston area, and I met to plan the retreat. Dennis invited a select group of older boys from the Brookshire community who have previously participated in the Big Bend retreat and other adventures in Colorado.


Our plan for this retreat is to provide the boys with their first opportunity to learn about hunting in Texas. That all begins with gun safety. Dennis and my old friend James Meredith led the gun safety orientation session for the boys. We spent a lot of time teaching about the fundamentals of firearm safety before taking the boys to the shooting range on the ranch.


This retreat, however, is about much more than firearms and marksmanship. It is part of a larger effort to shape the character of boys through outdoor adventure.


Boys need adventure. They need opportunities to step away from screens, enter unfamiliar environments, attempt difficult things, and discover what they are capable of doing. They need challenges that require them to listen carefully, act responsibly, manage their emotions, and persevere when success does not come easily.

The outdoors is one of the best classrooms for teaching these lessons. This is adventure with a purpose.


At the shooting range, the boys learned that every detail matters. They must listen to instructions, remain aware of those around them, and understand that their decisions have consequences. We repeatedly emphasized that handling a firearm requires maturity and self-control.


The boys learned that before they ever place their finger on the trigger, they must know where the muzzle is pointed and be certain of their target and what lies beyond it because a bullet can travel a long way. And they learned that they must obey the instructions of the mentor responsible for the gun range.


The lessons they are learning here extend far beyond the shooting range. Life also requires us to pay attention, exercise restraint, and consider how our choices will affect others. A young man who learns to act responsibly in the outdoors is developing skills that can help him become a responsible man.


Outdoor adventures are important because our culture is making life too easy for boys. Many boys spend too much time in carefully controlled environments where comfort is maximized, and they can avoid failure. But boys do not grow stronger by avoiding difficult things. They do, in fact, need opportunities to experience frustration and learn how to work through it.

That is why the shooting range is a good place for boys. They need to miss the target, adjust their aim, control their breathing, and try again. They need to discover that improvement requires patience, practice, and perseverance.


A key part of this retreat is the time boys get to spend with good men. They need men who will teach them how to handle responsibility and deal with setbacks. The outdoors creates natural opportunities for men and boys to have good conversations about these things.

At the end of this retreat, I hope that the boys will remember the men who stood beside them and took the time to help them succeed and to take another step toward manhood. Over the past couple of days, we have taught boys how to handle a firearm and safely hit a target responsibly. Ultimately, we are helping them aim their lives toward something greater. And that is a key reason why boys need adventure.

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Introducing Boys to Adventure

My days of adventuring started when I was a kid growing up in the small South Texas town of Mission. Our mesquite-shaded backyard, accented with broad stands of prickly pear growing out of hard-packed dirt, was where I first felt the thrill of adventure. I climbed and fell out of mesquite trees, harvested crispy and lifeless cicada shells clinging to gnarly mesquite branches, stalked birds with my air rifle, and made my first campfire in that big backyard.

My thirst for adventure is still strong six-decades later. But what really adds to my excitement is introducing boys to adventure. When Cheryl and I purchased our first tract of land in the Chihuahuan Desert outside of Big Bend National Park, we dreamed of developing it as a basecamp for adventure — especially for boys and dads, boys without dads, and families.


This past week we hosted our fourth annual Big Bend Adventure for boys from the Brookshire community and their mentors. The Brookshire community, located west of Houston, has the highest percentage of fatherless homes in the greater Houston area. We host our campouts in partnership with The Hangar, a ministry of Eyes On Me. This Christian non-profit exists to mentor, disciple, and serve at-risk youth and their families.

The boys arrived mid-afternoon on Sunday. Their first order of business was to select a campsite and pitch their tents. For many of the boys, this was their first time to set up a tent and to sleep outdoors. One boy spent the first night sleeping on top of his sleeping bag because he did not know that he was supposed to unzip it and crawl inside. The temps dipped to 26-degrees that night. He learned a valuable lesson and was much warmer on his second night.

On the first night around the campfire, we gave each boy a hydration backpack and all sorts of survival gear — first aid kit, headlamp, flashlight, emergency blanket, whistle, compass, paracord bracelet, and other cool outdoor stuff. We explained why each piece of gear is important and then used that item as a metaphor for a spiritual lesson.


The boys enjoyed two days of adventure in the national park. They hiked some beautiful trails and saw some remarkable scenery. This was the first time many of these boys had visited a national park. They enjoyed every minute of hiking and boulder scrambling and dipping in the Rio Grande River.


We also set aside one day for the boys to do tasks around the property that can only be accomplished by cooperating with one another. We talked to them about the importance of doing any assigned task well and why their work is essentially their signature.


This year the boys pounded t-posts along what will become a new fence line, fastened the horizontal pieces to cedar posts to make H-brackets and then tensioned those brackets with smooth wire. As in years past, they did a truly remarkable job on their assigned tasks.


James Meredith returned once again to serve as lead camp cook. James met with some of the boys to plan and execute meal prep. Every meal was so good. It was great to see some of the older boys step up to help with the meal preparation — a great way to learn responsibility.


My favorite time is always our evening campfire time. The boys sat around the campfire and listened to testimonies from our friend Rene, aka 211, from El Paso. He shared his powerful story of spending years in prison and falling in love with Jesus. He is a great mentor and a powerful speaker.


My friend a fellow staff member Bobby Cooley shared his emotional story of growing up in a broken home. Bobby is a testimony to the transforming power of the gospel. God rescued him from a childhood so crazy and that was leading him down a path that would have destroyed him.


A young man who goes by the name Nephew was released from prison 36 days prior to the campout. He shared his story of being shot on the streets, almost dying, going to prison, and having a life-changing encounter with Jesus who transformed his life.


As a result of listening to these campfire testimonies, five boys placed their faith in Christ and asked to be baptized in the Rio Grande River. Remarkably, on the day of the baptism, a visitor to the park who witnessed the baptisms asked questions and then placed his faith in Christ for salvation and was also baptized.


Once again, Cheryl and I felt reaffirmed in our commitment to make our place available to serve the purpose of God in our generation. Our hearts are filled with gratitude to God for the ministry of The Hangar and all of the boys and mentors who spent the week with us under the magnificent Big Bend skies. To God be the glory for the things He has done.