Alpine, TX

While staying in Marfa I was introduced to a man named Lonnie and his wife Paula, who had moved to Alpine a few years earlier to escape the constant growth and development of the Texas hill country. In their older years they wanted a quieter life and ran a small ranch there. I was invited to spend the morning with Lonnie and Paula, starting at dawn at the ranch followed by one of the biggest breakfasts on their back porch.

Lonnie is a horse wrangler and stuntman who has worked in movies for 45 years. He has worked with Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, Sam Elliot among many others, and I spent the morning hearing stories from the sets of some of my favorite movies of all time. We shot a few stills and did some filming as the sun rose.

After we finished filming, sitting on the porch of Lonnie and Paula’s place back in Alpine, Lonnie told me he didn’t mind Covid so much because he could always go up to his ranch alone and spend time with his horses, Emiliano and Zapata (named after his hero). I told him one of the things that hit me hardest in early Covid was when John Prine died. Tears sprung in his eyes immediately and he nodded in agreement, and said softly, “I loved that man”. As I was leaving, he pushed a book into my hand of interviews with John Prine.