The light was first fiery red at the horizon and then golden, bathing everything that caught it

With the hunters gone, except for those who might come back for the brief antlerless season, it's wonderful to have the ranch back to ourselves, the whole county actually. The traffic on the two-lane highway will get back to normal. No more fancy corn-spewing rigs, and no more Cabela's outfitted camo-colored humans to run into at Pepe's. Don't get me wrong, hunters are good for business in South Texas -- good for ranchers and land owners, good for business owners.

The cattle are ready to bolt into other pastures, since I've kept us and them in the smallest of spaces. As soon as we round up and pull the last of the calves off their mothers, we'll be sending them out to larger pastures. Last week we had a nice little rainfall, about three-quarters of an inch -- just enough to get the winter weeds growing, just enough to make the desert floor damp.

Many of the cattle have put on winter coats, and though spring seems just around the corner, I do wonder how much winter weather lies ahead. I won't mind a couple of hard cold snaps.

I've kept a schedule lately that has kept me from enjoying many of the cold weather sunrises by which I used to set my day. I realized this morning how much I miss those rich moments bathed in that first light, those moments in which the last of the serenata of the coyotes falls silent to the spectacle of daybreak. The sunrise I saw this morning filled my heart. The light was first fiery red at the horizon and then golden, bathing everything that caught it -- the old gray fenceposts, the weathered mesquite trunks, strands of fence wire, the chimneys and rooftops. Even the cattle looked sun-kissed and dappled in the morning light.

I've made myself a promise not to miss too many more of these lovely morning displays of light and smell and sound.

I don't like to be too confident about whether or not the snakes have headed deeper into the earth for warmth, but I do know this is one of the two months you can walk through the arroyos with relative ease.