Movie Memorabilia

Beautiful Skies Over Wide Open Spaces   by Reba McGowan

You don’t always have to spend money to be entertained. There’s nothing quite as enjoyable as a campfire on a cool night. As you’re enjoying the fire and roasting marshmallows, you can also enjoy the amazing night sky. Until you’ve seen a brilliant sky on a clear evening in the country, you can’t conceive of its beauty. When we choose to do this, we turn off all of our security lights so there is no interference from any artificial source. We’re lucky this is the only light we have to eliminate. If you live in the city, it’s impossible to do this because of the abundance of lights and the buildings and trees that block most of the night sky. We have several locations on our ranch where we have a 360-degree view of the sky, where we go to observe the Milky Way, planets and constellations and are always keeping an eye out for a shooting star or a rare comet or meteor. On nights when the Milky Way is vividly clear, you can get lost in the beauty of this canopy of lights. You feel as if you could reach up and grab it. Almost any night, if you are patient enough, you will see a shooting star or two. If the weather cooperates, and the clouds stay away, the brilliance of the moon is breathtaking. You can actually see “the man in the moon”.

The sunrises, sunsets and beautiful skies over wide-open spaces, namely rural acreage in the country, provide some of the most colorful images you will ever see. We have seen countless examples of this over our ranch. The prettiest sunrises and sunsets occur when thin clouds are on the horizon and the light of the rising and setting sun is reflected in vibrant shades of orange, pink and violet.

More than once, we have observed both the beginning and the end of the arching rainbow (still haven’t found a pot of gold at either end). You can actually see the various colors in the rainbow in front of a hill or wooded area if you’re able to follow the arch to where it meets the ground. When the sun is shining directly opposite drops of moisture in the atmosphere, rainbows will appear. We’ve actually seen several double rainbows on our land after a shower.

No sky is ever the same because of the varied kinds of clouds. My favorite is a “buttermilk” sky named for its similarity to the texture of cultured milk. Many songs have references to a “buttermilk sky”. Big thunderheads provide hours of free entertainment for big and little kids alike as they discover faces, animals and just about anything their imaginations allow them to conjure up. Many hours of my childhood (and probably yours) were spent lying on my back in the grass during summer vacation from school doing just this. Some clouds over ranch are not always a welcome sight, but we all have to take the bad with the good, and the rainfall is always a blessing.

If you’re ever interested in owning rural acreage in central Texas in Hamilton or the surrounding counties, there are other things you can do and see for free as well (and in today’s economy, that’s a good thing). For example, we have the Circle T Rodeo Arena Complex in Hamilton County, TX (just outside the town of Hamilton) where rodeo events as well as Texas TruCountry Music are televised on the RFD channel (some events at the Circle T are free of charge).

For assistance with local farm and ranch real estate sales, please visit http://www.txbrandland.com

About the Author

Reba McGowan was born and raised in the “Heart of Texas” in Brown County. Her farm & ranch real estate firm, Texas Brand Land Company, located in Cranfills Gap, Texas, has been helping folks realize their dreams of owning rural central Texas land since 1979. Being a long time ranch owner in Bosque County and in Hamilton County herself, she has the resources and the expertise to assist you in becoming a central Texas land or ranch owner as well.
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