Fifty Hours in West Texas

Trevor said it plainly in his opening before dinner: “We’ll give ourselves bonus points if we risk real conversation about faith, work, wisdom, and identity around the table or the campfire.”

It’s not often that someone leads with that kind of honesty, naming the deeper thing we all hope for but rarely get to. Most invitations promise networking, scenery, or escape. Trevor promised risk.

8 hours earlier, I’d packed a bag and flown west to San Antonio.

For a few days this week, I found myself on his family’s ranch in West Texas with 17 men, most of whom I’d never met. Some were founders, some investors, most fathers still trying to find their footing. We shot skeet in the wide desert wind (a few men holding a shotgun for the very first time). We hiked the ridges that cut through the property. We ate slow meals that stretched into the midnight hours.

And somewhere between the dust, the laughter, and the shared silence, we started earning those “bonus points.”

Trevor’s words turned out to be less of a suggestion and more of a challenge to stop performing and start revealing. Around the table, men spoke about loss, work that defined them too much, faith they couldn’t quite find, and families they were trying to rebuild. No one was trying to fix anyone. We just listened. And that listening turned out to be its own kind of healing.

I’ve been thinking about what psychologists say about friendship: it takes about 50 hours of shared experience to move someone from acquaintance to good friend, and around 250 hours to make them part of your inner circle. I don’t know who first counted those hours, but I believe them. And I also believe that concentrated time, like a few unhurried days in the desert, can accelerate that process in rooms I never feel like I belong in, but am thankful to be invited into anyway.

This was my third straight week on the road, with more to come. There’s a part of me that’s tired, missing home, ready to be still. But I’m also deeply grateful for the men who showed up, who risked truth instead of comfort, and who reminded me that the fastest way to belong somewhere new is to stop pretending you already do.

That’s the real bonus point.