Weekend before last, I took a trip of a lifetime — for a farm girl, anyway. I drove north, 191 miles from concrete, cars and construction to a farm near Powell, Texas, where my brother, Kit, lives.

A place that holds a little bit of everything. Texas, that is. Open plains, the Big Thicket — all but a beach. I did, however, find seashells. A heap more, too.

I’d meant to make the trip months ago. Kit reminded me: “Months? Years!” But for various reasons, it never happened. As typhus taught me — you have to be ready for journeys. Ready to take them, and willing to receive.

I arrived at Kit’s farm in time for Kit to go over a few chores I was to perform while he was away for a few days. Simple chores, like watching over his cattle and feeding two wonderful dogs (what dog isn’t?) called “Lucky” and “Foxy” and a cat called “Prissy.”

A few hours later my cousin John arrived with his 90-year-old father (my great uncle), Howard, riding in the front seat. They’d come to pick up Kit and drive to the Dallas airport — to take a trip of a lifetime, too, you might say. Theirs was to Gettysburg.

Howard had been there before. He’d escorted his grandfather, Caleb Cole, or “Pony” as everyone called him, at age 91 to the last reunion of the blue and gray in 1938. Now, Howard was being escorted to Gettysburg, coincidentally, on the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

I walked with Kit to the car and kept my promise to him by taking a picture of the threesome — “one picture only,” he’d insisted. As they drove off, I felt glad for everyone. Glad for the guys that they were finally getting off (the trip was originally planned for last October) and glad for me to be back on the farm, in the company of animals and the outdoors.

The peace around the place was palpable. I stood in this space, counting my lucky stars.

For three days, I basically STAYED outside, except when sleeping. Then, the wind drifted through the screen windows like a giant, gently blowing. It carried calls of all sorts — coyotes, trains, a mama to her calf.

On that first night, however, the giant wasn’t so gentle. Around 2 a.m. a storm blew through. Rain hit the tin roof sounding like tap dancers out of sync. Lots. Wind gusts were 60 mph, someone said later, but they sure seemed stronger to me. A basket of photographs flew off the kitchen table, scattering pictures across the room like chicken feed.

Each afternoon, our threesome (Lucky, Foxy and me) took walks. Long ones. Sometimes, we followed cattle trails to the tanks (man-made ponds), but mostly we just followed Lucky, who inevitably went for the woods. A little Big Thicket.

I was reminded that in these parts, the wind is like in no other place. It whips and lashes. Other times, it moves over the plains like a hand rinsing a plate. And so it went for the remainder of my stay.

I didn’t realize how much I’d missed this life. Manual labor especially. Stuff like gathering up limbs and sticks and putting them in piles. As writer/photographer Christopher Woods knows, “Things you don’t do in Houston.”

I realized how much I had missed crawling through and over a barbed wire fence. “Wedeling in the woods,” as Mama used to say. The sound of cattle pulling on grass, chewing. Sleeping with the windows open, waking to bird songs, watching a big ole' orange sun rise as softly as a moon, then lower later, casting colors across the sky like a seine. I hit the “biscuit” (bed) every night feeling connected to all the world around. Alive.

One day, rootin’ around in the tool shed, I was suddenly struck by a smell. One that I knew well, but had long since forgotten. A combination of tractor grease, hound dogs, cool, compressed dirt and something sweet, or so my nose said. It was strangely intoxicating to me as a kid — now, at 56, it hit something soulful.

I’d forgotten the curious cries of cattle. One afternoon, I heard a sound from the front pasture that made my heart jump. I ran in its direction, fearing a coyote was attacking a cow, only to find a bull from across the road just standing at the fence line. He was apparently talking to one of Kit’s bulls, the one that lets you run a rake down his back and on both sides of his neck, but recently gored another bull to death.

Kit was due in Monday night, but having already stayed longer than I’d planned, it was time to head home. Lucky looked forlorn and Foxy wouldn’t come out of the bushes. Still in the company of animals and the outdoors, I drove south, counting more of my own lucky stars.

Wouldn’t you know, when I got home there was an email waiting. My friend Robb Kendrick, also a photographer, had sent an article from The New Yorker Magazine (March 28) called "Just in Time for Spring" by Ellis Weiner. It opens with this:

"Introducing GOING OUTSIDE, the astounding multipurpose activity platform that will revolutionize the way you spend your time.

GOING OUTSIDE is not a game or a program, not a device or an app, not a protocol or an operating system. Instead, it’s a comprehensive experimental mode that lets you perceive and do things firsthand, without any intervening media or technology."

Weiner goes on to define GOING OUTSIDE in 11 ways. Being part hound dog, No. 5, struck a nerve.

"5. Supports all known, and all unknown, smells. Some call it “the missing sense.” But once you start GOING OUTSIDE you’ll revel in a world of scent that no workstation, media center, 3-D movie, or smartphone can hope to match. Inhale through your nose. Smell that? That’s a smell, which you are experiencing in real time."

Key word is "revel." For a farm girl, anyway.