Slim Randles is today’s guest with a reminder of what a cool summer evening can feel like. Sometimes we are blessed with the most perfect weather. We had one of those nice evenings here the other day and I took my dog for a long walk. I cut some flowers and he waited patiently for me to finish and go home.
I like the pattern on the road in this picture of Dusty. That’s why I didn’t crop it any more.
Okay, let’s have a cool drink to share as we enjoy a cool evening wherever we are.
It’s the heat that defines us this month. It greets us at daybreak with its promise, but in an hour or so, it bears down on our shoulders and makes us dream of shade and something cold to drink.
The best thing about our hot season, however, are evenings when most of the earth cools, and that breeze slides in off the mesa and caresses our cheeks.
Then it’s time to sit, and laugh, and tell stories and just be with someone we love.
Then is the culmination of a day we can be proud of.
Inside each of us, we silently and privately applaud ourselves, because the hot day tried us, but we did it. All day. We made it through the heat today. Made it with our hands today. Made it through to another precious July evening when we can sit on the patio with something cold and someone sweet.
So it gets hot in the daytime. Okay. But just don’t forget to give us these evenings, these blessed evenings when we can recall what cooler weather felt like.
Without these evenings, it would just be another hot summer day.
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Brought to you by www.riograndebooks.com who have put two of Slim’s books at 40% off, just for his readers and listeners.
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Check out all of Slim’s award-winning books at www.slimrandles.com, and in better bookstores and bunkhouses throughout the free world.
All of the posts here are from his syndicated column, Home Country that is read in hundreds of newspapers across the country. I am always happy to have him share his wit and wisdom here.
Slim Randles is a veteran newspaperman, hunting guide, cowboy and dog musher. He was a feature writer and columnist for The Anchorage Daily News for 10 years and guided hunters in the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. A resident of New Mexico now for more than 30 years, Randles is the prize-winning author of a dozen books, and is host of two podcasts and a television program.