The weather was just wonderful this evening with a cool breeze blowing through the trees, not a cloud in the sky and the dogs sitting lazily by my side on the porch. My wife let the horses into the back yard to graze. These quiet, simple evenings are the days that I long for and love, and this is why I live in Arizona.

I am reminded of the words of Jack Kerouac:

“No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself, depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.”

The greatest melancholy that can arise happens when a man makes himself servant to a single thing. His manhood gets taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician. I should like to be, also, something of a man.