Like I mentioned before, my return to my hometown has been a good experience, thus far. I’ve been connecting with people I’ve known for as long as I can remember, and others that I didn’t know before, but am enjoying getting to know now.

As I write this, I’m looking toward a beautiful purple skyline where the sun just slipped out of sight—a picture only a western sky could paint—and I ponder the unspoken bond I have with so many of the locals here—our shared sort of status.

Non-status.

For many of us, this area— maybe not this little town exactly, but the Sandhills region—is where we started out.

Here is where we were molded by the elements, rough work, and the tougher-than-nails people that raised us.

We got our start here, and then some of us moved away. We went to work, went to school, collected pay checks, degrees, vices and memories of other places and people.

Now here we are, returned to this place.

Where once perhaps we dreamed of grand adventure, new faces and places to see, we now drift back, seeking the comfort of the old and familiar.

We get that here; there’s plenty of that here.

This dusty town that time nearly forgot—where rusty pickups, jingling spurs and wide brim hats are still a common sight—is one corner of the world that’s still recognizable to us.

That’s what’s brought us back.

Because we fit here better than anywhere else, forever marked by the history of a land that lives within our bones. It’s a part of us; and we belong to it, like it or not.

Growing up in this area—the hub of our nation’s beef capital— any one of us can tell you there’s a wild west here that Hollywood never knew anything about. All those western shoot-‘em-up movies could never tell the whole story of the real truth about this place or its people.

I didn’t know it growing up, but the way I was raised, and the things I’ve known and seen here are quite a bit different from what other people know of life—people not from here. And the day will come when the times that we’ve lived here will be long forgotten, and I seriously doubt any accurate account will be found in any history book.

But I’m glad to have known this way of life that is sometimes hard, but always simple. Where people are made of tougher and truer stuff, know the value of hard work, appreciate the small things in life, and are smart enough to know what truly matters.

So maybe it is a three-hour drive to the nearest Starbucks, and you might have to wait until the store opens up again tomorrow to get your gallon of milk, but who said instant gratification was necessarily a good thing?

I guarantee it wasn’t anyone from around here.