Carrying the cost, the hope, and the ride into new country
The Burned Saloon and the Man from San Antonio
There’s a scene from Lonesome Dove that keeps playing in my head, right near the end. Woodrow F. Call is back in that dusty Texas town after hauling Gus’s body 3,000 miles south, just to bury him by a stream under a tree, because Gus asked him to. He’s staring at the ruins of an old saloon in the town, burnt down, hollowed out.
A stranger walks up and begins to tell him the story: how the owner, a Xavier Wanz, once loved a working woman, Miss Lorraine, and when she left, he missed her so much that he burned the place down around himself.
The man then asks if he’s Captain Call, Captain Woodrow F. Call, and if he can talk to him. “What do you want?” Woodrow says… “I’m a reporter from San Antonio,” he says. Woodrow looks at him a moment and says simply, “No.” Then turns to walk away.
But the man follows:
“They say you brought your friend 3,000 miles just to bury him… they say you were both Texas Rangers in the old days… you started the first cattle ranch in Montana… they say you’re a man of vision.”
Woodrow stops, not turning around.
Clips flash across the screen; Deets, Newt, Jake, Pete, Agustus, the crew one by one. Everything they lost. Everything they gave. All because of one thing: a vision. Woodrow’s vision to leave Lonesome Dove and go to Montana. Then he speaks, with tears welling in his eyes, I imagine from realizing the cost of that vision:
“A man of vision, you say. Yeah… Hell of a vision.”
That line, and the music, cuts deep. Not bitter. Not proud. Just true. It’s stayed with me — not because of the drama or nostalgia, but because in some crazy fashion, I see myself in it. A friend once told me that I see life like a movie script. Sometimes, I think that’s true. The highs and the lows of the story, I feel both of them deeply.
“Sometimes, the only reason you’re still in the saddle is because grace wouldn’t let you fall.”
We romanticize vision. We write it into mission statements and paste it on walls. But real vision isn’t clean. It’s not PowerPoint slides and quarterly goals. It’s messy. It’s stubborn. It wakes you up in the night. It pulls you forward when there’s no map and no backup.
My vision brought me here, to this moment, through two decades of building, leading, loving, breaking. It brought me into meeting rooms, into partnerships, into the kind of love that rewrites a man’s story. It also brought pain. Distance. Loss. Burnt-out buildings of my own.
And the truth is, I don’t know if my vision always aligned with God’s will. Some of it, maybe. Some of it, probably not. But even when I was chasing what I thought mattered, when I was running on fumes and trying to hold everything together, God didn’t leave me. I know that. Even when I didn’t have vision, when I was too weary or too lost to even see what was ahead, He carried me. I know this also.
“Who can separate us from the love of Christ?
Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?”
(Romans 8:35)
That verse isn’t poetry to me. It’s survival. I’ve felt every one of those things in one way or another, and still, He held on.
“You are my hiding place and my shield;
I hope in Your word.”
(Psalm 119:114)
Even when I didn’t know where the trail was leading, faith gave me eyes. Not to see the whole path, but just enough to take the next step.
I carried the vision. But more than that, I was carried. Still, here I am.
Sometimes the road ahead is uncertain — but still worth riding.
My Own Lonesome Dove
There’s a certain season of your life that becomes your Lonesome Dove. A place you remember not because it was easy, but because it was yours.
For me, that was life with Kellie, with my kids growing up under one roof. It was my job and the work I poured my heart into. It was morning routines, familiar streets, and the long ache of knowing some things were slipping away even as I held them tight.
That town’s mostly behind me now. The saloon’s burned down. The people I rode with are scattered, some gone. And yet, that place made me. The dust of it still clings to my boots.
The Ride Into Montana
Gus said it best:
“There’s nothing like riding a fine horse in new country.”
I’ve shared that quote before, it keeps coming back to me. Maybe because that’s what I’m doing now. New country. China. A new life with Xue. A fledgling business of my own and a new partnership. A child on the way. Risks I can’t predict. Hope I can’t quite shake.
I’m not starting over — I’m riding forward, saddle heavy with everything I’ve carried. And in that bag? My old copy of Lonesome Dove. It’s coming with me. The pages are a little worn, dog-eared from years of rereading. It reminds me where I’ve been, and that even when the map runs out, the ride goes on.
No Apologies, No Regret
Woodrow doesn’t brag. He doesn’t apologize. He just says it:
“A hell of a vision.”
That’s where I am too. No need to justify the choices, the detours, the pain. It was mine. It is mine.
I’m not looking for applause. Only a moment to mark the ride and mount up for the next one.
The vision cost much. But it gave much, too.
To my kids, who might read this one day, your father didn’t always get it right. But he kept going and trying.
To anyone carrying their own vision across hard terrain — you’re not alone. The dust, the weight, the heartache, it’s part of the ride. Don’t let it fool you into thinking you’re lost.
Sometimes, the vision takes everything. And sometimes, the only reason you’re still in the saddle is because grace wouldn’t let you fall. Whether your path is lit by purpose or shadowed by questions
“You are my hiding place and my shield…”
Let that be enough to keep going.
A Hell of a Vision. And I’d do it all again.
“It’s not dying I’m talking about, its living!”
— Agustus Mcrae
Echo From The West 