I have nearly come the complete circle. After having lived in the Houston area for two years, I am returning to West Texas in line with a job station transfer. There were many things I liked about the Third Coast, including the many days strolling along the seashore in the morning or the dusk, the many interesting things to see and to do, and getting to know family that were as strangers before. But the down side of course was the rat race, and I mean RAT RACE, that was the lifestyle in the greater Houston area. The highway carnage was daunting, and the effort it took to run the smallest of errands in Houston and the outlying cities was just too much. A good place to visit, but I will leave the living there for those better adjusted to hectic, clamorous, faceless existence required of a mecca like Houston.

In just a couple of weeks I will be back to the quiet of the semi-desert and the somewhat relaxed life allowed by residing in the middle of nowhere special, yet a special place it really is. For one, the sunsets are most spectacular, unequaled in nearly two years on the Third Coast. The desert itself, for another, is a great draw for me. As a teenager I remember standing outside my home in Central Texas, feeling some thing, some force, as it were, compelling me to go to the west. It was years later that I finally did so. In the time since then, we (my family) moved out of the area once, but returned within the year. It is the same now...after all the great advantages realized with the move to Houston, I am yearning to be back to West Texas.

And will be...soon.