I was wandering down a long and dusty road, on my way to nowhere...and nowhere surely did I find. Pretty soon a cactus rode up upon me, with prickly pears in her hair, and nopales on her mind. “To where do you fare” she says, so I take a generous gander, long and hard mind you. I figure I’m not quite privy to whatever it is she just so happens to mean. She might want me to stop for the night; but of this, I can’t yet be certain. “Well,” I says, “I’m bound for Amarillo, but ought to spare my horse for a spell, and might could use a bit of rest myself on this here lonesome dusty road”. Ah, well son, that fateful day was nothin’ more than the very beginning of my life. No moment that precedes it do I rightly remember, but all that happened after stands out clear and mournful as a brisk evening wind over the curved lip of my sadly empty whiskey bottle. It all started back in 1889. I was just a young buckaroo, fresh off the family farm. Not a worry to bother, nor a fear in my eye. She was a mysterious dusky lass, I did meet that day, selling cara cara orange cream soda if I remember correctly; though I was smoking figurado cigars and munching slowly on kumquat duck sausage while sitting fragrant without a bath. Couldn’t say what it was attracted her to me. Me being ripe as a nectarine left out in the hot summer sun of the Desierto de Sonora at high noon, without a sombrero to shade my face or watermelon agua fresca to slake my thirst. All I can think, is that fate shined her bright light down upon me, stuck out her hand, scooped me up like a pitcherful of cinnamon horchata and all, and bounced me around like a cottontail goosed in the rear; or maybe it was like a grasshopper haphazardly alighting on rose- colored campfire coals sparkling with rainbow peppercorns and Tahitian vanilla beans ground betwixt my heels. Well never you mind, that’s just the start of my tale.....

notes by clay selkirk, winemaker & all-around cowboy