My friend John R. Erickson, author of great Hank the Cowdog books, relays a story told by famous cowboy Baxter Black: “A young boy walked up to him and said, ‘Mr. Black, are you a real cowboy?’ Baxter laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “It depends on who’s listening.”

John Erickson doesn’t write parables, but some of his stories about the cowboy life he once lived would work well in church. The Bible refers to us as sheep, sometimes without a shepherd, but we also act like cattle and anger the Owner of the ranch. In 1982, Erickson, the author of the popular Hank the Cowdog series of books, published a bunch of these stories in The Devil in Texas and Other Cowboy Tales.

John Erickson doesn’t write parables, but some of his stories about the cowboy life he once lived would work well in church. The Bible refers to us as sheep, sometimes without a shepherd, but we also act like cattle and anger the Owner of the ranch. In 1982, Erickson, the author of the popular Hank the Cowdog series of books, published a bunch of these stories in The Devil in Texas and Other Cowboy Tales.

John Erickson doesn’t write parables, but some of his stories about the cowboy life he once lived would work well in church. The Bible refers to us as sheep, sometimes without a shepherd, but we also act like cattle and anger the Owner of the ranch. In 1982, Erickson, the author of the popular Hank the Cowdog series of books, published a bunch of these stories in The Devil in Texas and Other Cowboy Tales.

John Erickson doesn’t write parables, but some of his stories about the cowboy life he once lived would work well in church. The Bible refers to us as sheep, sometimes without a shepherd, but we also act like cattle and anger the Owner of the ranch.

“The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for the sunrise of wonder.” —G.K. Chesterton

Here in the Texas Panhandle, 2019 brought an exceptionally wet spring, and by the first of June, we had already received the 21 inches of rainfall that we recognize as our annual average. My wife, Kris, and I predicted that it would be a showcase year for wildflowers on our ranch—and we were right. For weeks, we felt we were watching a fireworks display on the ground.

John R. Erickson, well known as the author of the great Hank the Cowdog series of children’s books, knows cowdogs because he was first a cowboy. He worked on ranches in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles for eight years, and in 1986 wrote a book titled Cowboy Country based on his experiences along the Beaver River in 1978 and 1979. I’ve put excerpts from that book into four baskets labeled spring, summer, fall, and winter.