Cowboy Moguls

I caught up on Friday's WSJ accompanied by an epsom salt bath and tea. I was especially drawn to the article discussing the strong demand for mega ranches in the U.S. - those with typically over 100,000 total acres (with often a substantial portion of deeded acreage) listed from roughly $10 million to $175 million. (Find your mental map of the U.S. and think about New Mexico - this is where the 'cowboy moguls' are mostly flocking to). In the fiscal year of 2014, the value of U.S. pasture land normally grazed by livestock rose 11%, making property with revenue streams highly desirable. With drought conditions slowly on the upswing, higher cattle prices, a boom in the oil & gas industry and attractive interest rates on mortgages, ranches that have been sitting on the market are starting to sell. In 2012 for instance, Billionaire Stan Kroenke, (owner of St. Louis Rams and soccer's Arsenal F.C), scooped up the 124,000-acre Broken O Ranch in Montana for a cool $132.5 million. Head due south, and D.R. Horton (founder of America's largest home building company) purchased Great Western Ranch in New Mexico for over $59.5 million, where he hopes to use the 293,000 acres as a landscape to entertain clients and made available for use by his 'key employees'. Despite the alluring qualities of entertaining and sporting on the majestically vast land, there is certainly keen interest in investing in an asset that can aid in profitability, whether it may be fracking and mineral rights, livestock operations or fees from wildlife hunting. Those billionaires might be on to something...

Read on, here. 

Perspective

I found myself chatting up a storm with a Texan in Atlanta last evening. That’s right, a cardiologist from Texas that like moi, was attempting to ship up to Boston. Long delays among travel adventures are never fun but I do enjoy the beauty of meeting people you might not ordinarily meet…when life gives you lemons, I suppose? We got chit-chatting about our respective life journeys – he was meeting a woman for a romantic getaway, the first of its kind since his wife passed away with breast cancer – and I was about to begin a new chapter of my own. We watched each other’s belongings as we took turns venturing out to drown ourselves in coffee and somehow always found our way back to deep conversation. He was an absolute delight to converse with, (generations ahead of me) well mannered, curious about my stories, and an instant new friend. It was a connection that gently reminded me that everyone is on their own journey...

Image via

Le Postcard

Stephanie Steinman (above) has created Le Postcard, a site that profiles the travel habits of wordly influencers. See below for a sneak-peak. Jessica de Ruiter dishes on her farm life in Canada. She feasts on river trout with her family and relies on the property's well water to keep her skin glowing...more here.

Jeanann Williams heads to Greece for a girls trip with her teal luggage et al...more here.

How fitting...one of my favorite jewelry designers in one of my favorite locales: Aurélie Bidermann plays in Positano...more here.

Sabine Ghanem heads to Harbour Island with her lover and friends. See what she did aside from the reggae and snorkeling....see here.

Meredith Melling opens up about how she pines for Pringles in hotel mini-bars and how she dreams of a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Tennessee... (that makes two of us)!

#preach

The below is a closing prayer I listened to at church Sunday evening. It particularly resonated with me. I'm not a habitual church-mouse but when I do go, it reaffirms just how good it can be for the soul. I hope it resonates with you also:

Disturb us, O Holy One,

when we are too well pleased with ourselves;

when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little;

when we arrived safely because we have sailed too close to shore.

Disturb us, O Holy One,

when with the abundance of the things we possess,

we have lost our thirst for the water of life.

Stir us, O Holy One,

to dare more boldly, to venture on wilder seas,

where storms will show your power;

where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

Stir us, O Holy One,

push back the horizons of our hopes

and push us into future in strength, courage, hope and love. Amen.