Ice, Wind, Texas.

RM_Westtexas

It’s just about 10pm when Ross and I pull off Hwy 70 and nose up to a cattle gate entrance to the Double Heart ranch not far from Sweetwater, Texas. We’re waiting for a woman we’ve never met. It’s dark, of course. But it’s also raining ice and the wind is blowing in gusts. All we can see around us are hundreds of flickering red lights blinking like summer fireflies. What are they coming from?…we’re not really sure. We heard this is wind country so our best guess is the lights are from massive turbines. Feeling guilty, we are two hours late after crossing into a new time zone and having lost an hour in Las Cruces to replace the rotors on our wheels. As the headlights of our Texas host appear, I jump out of the cab, shake hands through the heavy-guage fence, and run back to the truck to grab a hammer and knock the ice off the frozen lock. This is hardly the Texas arrival we expected. But it’s just a short drive up to the house and all the warmth of a Texas summer is waiting for us inside.

So begins our stay with Nita Oatman at her historic family ranch. We can’t keep her out of the kitchen feeding us meal after meal. The next few days with “Ms. Nita” are full of outstanding stories, black and white photos from the old ranch, shooting shotguns, and walking through fields full of wind turbines. The only way to put it is “Ms. Nita” puts the ‘sweet’ in Sweetwater. She even came to rescue us when the Dodge Lodge broke down.