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When the cowboys had gone to bed, I helped myself to the rest of that 麻豆传媒AVern Comfort and sat by the fire. The cowboys had complained they were tired and they wanted an early night to rest but I was fired up on life. I knew I would be the one falling behind in the ungodly hours of the early morning but I took shots from the bottle and watched the fire churn its colours of orange, yellow and red hues.

The 麻豆传媒AVern Comfort altered my thinking, the way a soft sunrise makes you more apt to become either sentimental or more romantic in your contemplations. Behind me, comforted in the silence of the deep night, I could hear the horses lumbering around under the bright light of the almost full moon. I would say it was around 75 per cent full.

The night was muggy, not exactly cold and not exactly hot; it was temperate. I didn't really think so much as I just sat there and took it all in. I experienced. I didn't worry about a thing. The night was silent, the horses were pulling at the grass and tearing it up into their mouths and the stars were out as bright as they ever were.

Across that large green field, on the small rise of land that elevated the animals closer to the moon, they cast off silhouettes against a backdrop of deep pine forest behind them. The moisture of the grass combined with the bright moon to produce a shimmer of silver on each individual blade and it was breathtaking. The small grassy hill became a moving silver blanket that drifted up and under each horse, raising them into the backdrop of the star-studded black sky.

At moments, each horse would lift and cock its head towards our camp, staring as if they knew something more about the serenity of mere existence. Their mouths chewed in rhythmic sideways mashes of teeth and grass and that cadence of sound was like those small rivers we had ridden through the previous day; the sound of nature, the sound of something man had never created, something closer to God; an ephemeral ether where creation was born out of nothing that came before it.

I heard the sound. Maybe it was the sound of that homestead that used to be, the work, the people making life in the prairie expanse of Saskatchewan, clearing this land for farming and making their way in the world. Maybe it was just the sound of horses. Maybe.

I crawled into the tent and soon sleep took me into the black.

The morning came quick. I was rousted from my drowse by my father and, when I crawled through the tent flaps, our troupe was milling around the campfire and camp-stoves. There was no hangover in this environment. The air here was too clear and moist to cause cellular dehydration, the source of a hangover's crude beginnings.

Ken, Bill, Wendell and George were all grey hair, cowboy boots and plaid button-up shirts. They were men who had lived lives, wed wives and brought up children; family men with stories, experience, knowledge and, most likely, their fair touch of wisdom. Deportment.

I feared that, at my age, most of them had already had their first child. There were rumours boys really became men when that official rite of passage created the true responsibility of taking on the care of another human being. I had heard the rumours. There must be some semblance of truth in that proverbial hearsay.

Like machinery, their hands worked as cogs to prepare the day and to make cerebral activity into reality; through activity their hands did not sit idle and become the devil's playground. Their bodies were not stagnant with thought, but instead the morning crept into a treadmill crawl of sluggish bustle, steady and determined, purposeful and practised, wise, responsible.

Breakfast that day was leftovers - bacon, sausage, eggs and a touch of bannock pancakes. The coffee was made again with lake water. It was filtered and boiled in a pot. After our bellies were full and the dishes were done, we began to roll up our tents, pack up our horses and put out the fire.

With responsible knowledge as his guide, Wendell spent around half an hour with the task of putting out the fire properly. I hauled at least three full buckets of water which he used to douse the flames and soak the embers. With a stick, he poked and rolled the charred, black wood until all of the heat was exposed to the water. He would check for heat by running his palms back and forth above the black skeletal remains of the wood, as if he were some new age holistic healer running his hands over the body of a patient and feeling for emitted energy. He would stir the pot, douse again, turn it over, turn it over, stir again and check the embers. Finally, all the embers had been broken apart and exposed. No heat burned hidden inside the wood, threatening to rekindle at a later time.

The pack boxes were tied on to the pack horses, tied with diamond knots. I was shown how a diamond knot was tied. The nylon rope was tethered around the horse, pulled into four directions, from the centre, and in its completion made a diamond shape.

I bridled my horse, threw my blanket and saddle over its back, tied my sleeping bag up and on the ass (behind the saddle), put my foot in the stirrup, grabbed the reins and hoisted myself up and on. It was another three-hour ride back through sand and bush, across an overgrown grass field (where Ken had lassoed a log and pulled it into camp for firewood), past the snowmobile shack and through the overrun and watered-out road.

There would be issues on the way back.