I have heard this phrase spoken to me in many ways throughout my life. I have witnessed the amazing spectacle that comes with growing up on these dirt roads of West  Texas. 

My grandfather taught me how to look at the sky and study it. In my fond memories, I can still hear him say, “Storm is a comin’.” This memory I speak of goes way back to when we used to walk the family/community corn field that was prominently growing each year on the farm.

(Storm Brewin – Texas Panhandle)

He would hold my hand and guide me, all the time providing me with observational science to life but also, he saw something deeper in every glance he shared. I first felt soil for the first time with his hands, he would smile at the temperature and the density of color. The wisdom is only truly seen after you have witnessed the teachings of guidance from above. His statue and grace were embedded into my innocence and I have forever guarded it with a shield of armor. My strength? 

Trust.

How can you not trust the truth in what you believe and see? Where I come from we call it “gut instinct,” my trust comes from a gut instinct that I see very little these days. 

When I first struck out towards Kansas in the summer of “21 for the seasonal harvest of wheat and corn, among a few other commodities I wasn’t prepared for, I couldn’t tell anyone definitively what the hell I was doing. My family and a few friends I was communicating with kept scratching their heads wondering what this wanderlust analyst was doing.

(ND wheat harvest ‘21)

My response was, “I can’t quite tell ya.” not that I was being cryptic or anything, I truly didn’t have a good excuse that anyone would listen or understand. I just hit the road, I knew a storm was a ‘comin..

The road and the storms give a view and a different perspective. As the years have passed I can say this in current times.

A Storm Is Coming!

Deep data back in 2017 allowed me to see that a nation is sick. Our illness lies in many areas of life. Not only is our health in jeopardy but so is the canvas in which we operate and steward.

Storms come in different seasons with different hazards and production thereof. 

I have been following the seasons my whole life. It started with the season of innocent discovery, which led to many seasons of following through from the wisdom of looking at the sky as I experienced the cool flow of soil and the water from the Ogallala that created the flow of life in the first place.

It gave me a gut instinct I can’t speak of, it’s just there and I have grown tired of trying to explain it, I hope that people can see with a little patience and persistence they can bear witness to the signs and signals I try to live.  

(Australia Beef Initiative Summit – EthicalFarmers)

A handshake that flows with integrity. A gaze into the eye of another who knows how to look at the sky, the feeling of few words of density, meaning, and value. The integrity has to be trusted and understood in the first place. A form of firmness and sternness that doesn’t have a definition but an unspoken truth.

My journeys into this trust and truth come from innocence that now has a strength of wisdom and a posture of knowing that the trust given to me now can become the truth to millions who now understand that truly a storm is a comin’.

That trust materializes patiently with the persistent intentions of a man who passes the “gut instinct” of those who have borne witness to his actions.

As we venture into this new horizon, we all go together. The storm we are facing will require a little “gut instinct,” from all of us.

I Am Texas Slim, are you?     

-”The road that goes on forever just like the storms of life!”