It was daybreak on a cold, snowy morning in late September and we were making our final gather at timberline in Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains. Eighteen excited guest cowboys from every corner of America had arrived at our Lake Creek Cow Camp the day before. For the next five days and fifty miles, they would leave their everyday cares at home for a western experience more common to 1898 than 1998.

Mother Nature had blessed us with six inches of fresh snow during the night, so guests used to saddling up in well lit, heated barns prior to loping around an indoor arena, struggled as they kicked through the snow to find all their tack. (Now they understood the evening suggestion about tying bridles to saddles and tucking them all under the driest pine tree in the timber.) We were an hour behind schedule when we split our guests amongst the cowboy crew and scattered to gather the high country.

Renee` and Gabe, a gracious mother / daughter duo from North Carolina, followed me as I trotted toward the head of Lick Creek. The crisp mountain air was deathly still as the early morning, low hanging clouds battled the first rays of sunlight. We rode through the broken timber and the soft, fluffy snow muffled the noise of our horse’s hooves giving the feeling we were floating across the mountainside. I reached an open park the very second the sun’s rays broke through and illuminated the granite rims on the far canyon wall. The view of God’s creation was breathtaking and I stopped my pony to scan the valley for cows. The steam was drifting upward from the flanks of my sweat-soaked horse when Renee` trotted up and quietly joined me gazing across the vast openness. Over the rhythmic movement of our breathing horses, she softly whispered in a beautiful southern drawl, “Do ya’ll have any idea how blessed you are that this is your life?”

“Yeah, I do,” I mumbled mostly to myself thinking how that very moment I felt in perfect harmony with God’s plan. “I have a great wife at home, a loving family, and God made me a Wyoming cowboy.” We sat silently staring a moment longer and then loped off to find cows.

Over the past 12 years, I have often thought back to that exact moment; it is forever imbedded in my soul. My life has changed. All my cows went to town in 2001. I sold the cattle drive business to my older brother, Dana, and my kids, which were my summertime cowboy crew, are all married now and have given me six grandkids. It has been a long time since I jerked my saddle from a sweaty horse, went to the horn doctoring a foot-rot steer or threw a double-diamond; all the experiences which forged me. Only one thing remains the same, each night I crawl in bed with my high school sweetheart who also, fortunately, happens to be my trophy wife of 31 years.

Public service in Montana’s legislature has possessed all my free time since 2006. If Renee` were to repeat her question today asking if I realized how blessed my life was, I would answer: “Yeah, I do; I have a great wife at home, a loving family, and God made me an American patriot.”

Given the world’s population, I only had a 4.5 percent chance of being born part of this great American experiment in freedom, yet here I am. All the world’s wondrous miracles and relief of suffering over the last 200 years was driven by the freedom emanating from the only nation whose founding documents declared their unalienable rights came from God. Sadly, our republic is dying. Collectivists seek to destroy any idea of a Creator’s hand in American exceptionalism, thereby replacing the ideal of Divine freedom with the ideal of the common good and social justice. They are dangerously wrong and freedom is slipping from our grasp. God has truly blessed America and regardless the outcome of the recent election, whether I am on the inside or the outside, I will not give up my country with out a fight! I am an American patriot and I just want to be free.