First off, each and every one of you owe a BIG thank you to John Lassiter. You may want to say "She's playing favorites" but each and every time I was annoyed this weekend, I took it out on him.

I spent much of the weekend thinking of you all. I was in Sanderson, fielding your abuse complaints, checking on the forums as I became able to access the internet, deleting more than deserved to be deleted probably from the forums.

As we pulled into Sanderson I looked over at Jeff B and said "I hope the younger kids take time to listen to the older herpers and learn a few things that they can use down the road".

I hope that for you too. This weekend in the land of Alterna with many of the original road cruisers, I sat and listened. I asked questions. I gathered the stories and took what information I knew would work and what was the story of the "Biggest bass in the books" stories. I took information I could apply practically to my world and what I was doing and left everything behind.

This is a talent you all need to start to learn. It wasn't about who was right or who was wrong, but what we learned from each other along the way. It was about learning and doing together. It was about the reptiles. It was about the snakes. There were no egos involved when we sighted things. It was general camaraderie. It was about shared passions and not who was right.

Next year at the Sanderson event, I would really like to see more of you out there. I would love to sit at the banquet between Frank, Rainer, Doug, Kerby, Jorge, John and Thomas and listen to you each talk on your common grounds. I would love to see each and every one of you walking the cuts, stopping to see what the other found, talking in the morning about Langtry, the 9 mile, the 16 mile, 2400, the microwave cut, the railroad cut and more. Sharing defeat as easily as sharing victory.

When Jeff was taking me to the airport monday morning I groaned and mentioned how I had to try to deal with the kingsnake children. He looked at me and informed me that I was now an Alterna girl. I had herped the holy land and I had better embrace that. Not sure if I am ready to do that yet, but what I really want is you all to get your butts in the field and remember WHY you are here. Remember WHAT we are here for. Not egos, the snakes.

There is no one way to keep snakes. That is 100% correct frank. But there are things that you can learn from each other if you can get past the egos. Let's see if we can try.

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Cindy Steinle
PHFaust
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