Saddle Days

It’s been eleven years since I stopped chasing endless Llano Estacado horizons and kicking up prairie dust in rollicking range herding adventures. I swapped carefree saddle days and open range for more leisurely meanders and rumination about life in verdant Carolina woodlands.

I hung up my spurs and cowboy lid—a wide-brimmed, Cattleman-creased straw hat—yet, mind’s eye often drifts into nostalgic reverie about the short-grass prairie, shin-oak and sage-covered Sandhills on the eastern reaches of New Mexico’s high plains. A spirited American Paint named Trouble was a favored mount…even in my early “greenhorn” days.

(An excerpt from a poem I penned years ago)

Roll out of bed, stumble, it’s o’dark thirty;

Find gloves, don’t forget hat hung on rack;

Grab spurs, slide into boots worn and dirty;

Make tracks in old pickup, dogs in the back.

Saddle up Trouble at first blush of dawn.

The stallion joins Melon Head a red mule

And two weathered cowpokes ‘bout to have fun

With a wide-eyed greenhorn…flat-out old-school.

© Ilija Lukić 2026

Riding Trouble And Melon Head

Sandhills west of Muleshoe Texas