Two men who lived in cowboy boots. Chewed tobacco. Talked sweet to their horses. From the time I was a kid, they hunted bucks together in the high country. Climbed onto their horses, tied their guns down, and rode deep into the mountains.

They fished side by side at mountain lakes. Lakes blue and deep and cold as the snow that fills them when summer brings new life. After a long, hard winter when the snow buckles pine trees, and puts the bears to sleep. That long, hard winter that’s hard on everything.

These two men care about each other– deeply, truly care–but haven’t talked in years. Like trout that won’t bite. Won’t rise to the surface where light clears the water. I’m not sure why, the bottom line why. They made each other mad awhile back–a handful of years ago on a hunting trip–and when you make a cowboy mad, he either punches you or rides away.

Maybe that’s the problem. No punching. No riding away. Just this long, hard winter that’s hard on everything.

I know there’s more to it than this– getting mad while hunting– other hurts in their thirty-year friendship, before Montana when it all blew up.

These men raised by hard men. Fathers who beat on them and tried to break them. Two cowboy spirits that just won’t break. When you try to break a boy who won’t break something happens. Deep inside that boy something happens. A wound happens. Then hardens. And then the boy hardens.

And that hardness follows you. Like a well-trained dog, it follows you. It herds your cows, and eats your food, and licks your hand, but it will bite you, too. Once it’s been wounded, it will bite you.

I’ve watched these two men stand together after the funeral of one of their dear mothers. Stand side by side in the shade after church and not say a word. Cold ones in hand just standing there. No talking. No drinking. Just standing there breathing for each other back when they were still buddies.

Maybe this long, hard winter of no words is the way cowboys heal. A healing I don’t understand, but a healing, nevertheless. I’ve been praying. Though the years of no words, I’ve been whispering words to God. The Good Lord understands. He knows how to mend hard men. Just like He knows how to bring summer to mountain lakes.

The snow is melting now in the high country– melting– running clear and life-giving into the lakes. Soon the trout will rise. Out of the bottom of the lake when the ice melts the trout will rise. And I pray these men will fish again side by side.

Just fishing.

Just softening.

Just healing.

Because you can’t make old friends.

You can make new friends, but those friends don’t know you. Deeply, truly know you. Have had your back at funerals, and laughed with you at weddings. Those friends haven’t been through hell with you. And aren’t trying to get into heaven with you. They haven’t fished with you at mountain lakes after riding all day on horses you’ve trained together. They haven’t stared down bears with you, and fried onions with you, and butchered deer with you. Now that you’ve butchered each other through your winter of no words.

And the snow melts.

Summer comes.

It always comes.

You have time to fish again.

Ride again.

Hunt again.

Your hair is turning gray now, but two lesser men would have died long ago on that mountain trail when the pack fell off the mule and the horses went wild. That black mule you called the widow maker and long-legged Duke, the buckskin one of you bailed off of just in time to miss that tree. The other hit a tree, two dusty cowboys tossed on their backsides together– though you both say you jumped from your runaway horses to save your own lives– two proud, bruised up cowboys limping home together.