Texas Hill Country: Where I Grew Up

There’s a particular quality of light in the Texas Hill Country that I’ve never found anywhere else. It comes through the cedar oak trees in golden shafts during summer evenings, and it casts long shadows across the limestone hills that I learned to climb before I learned to read. That light taught me something important about truth-telling: sometimes the most important things are the ones hiding in plain sight, visible to anyone who takes the time to look.

I grew up in Kerrville, Texas—a small town nestled along the Guadalupe River in the heart of the Hill Country. Population around 23,000, give or take.

In many ways, it was the quintessential small American town. Everyone knew everyone. Doors were left unlocked. Neighbors looked out for each other. But beneath that quiet surface, I learned early that stories—complex, often uncomfortable stories—were everywhere.

The Land Teaches You to Pay Attention

The Texas Hill Country isn’t flat like much of Texas. It’s rolling hills, limestone bluffs, and rivers that cut through the earth like veins. The landscape demands your attention. You can’t glaze over here because the terrain changes every few hundred feet. One minute you’re walking through a pasture, and the next you’re at the edge of a canyon that drops a hundred feet to a creek below.

This geography shaped how I approach investigations. When you’re hiking these hills, you notice things. A fence line that doesn’t match the property records. Cattle grazing on land that’s supposedly unused. A road that appears on some maps but not others. The land doesn’t lie, but you have to know how to read it.

My father was a ranch hand for a large property east of Kerrville. I spent my childhood riding alongside him, learning to read the land the way others learn to read books. I remember one afternoon when I was twelve, we came across a stock tank that shouldn’t have been there according to the county water rights documents. My father shrugged it off—probably just an error, he said. But something clicked in my mind. Errors in official documents often hide stories worth telling.

That curiosity, planted in the Texas Hill Country, would eventually grow into a career.

Camp La Junta and Formative Years

No discussion of my childhood in Kerrville is complete without mentioning Camp La Junta. My grandfather, Tommy Redhorse, was one of the camp’s founders in 1946. He believed that teaching young people to fish the Guadalupe River was about more than recreation—it was about patience, observation, and respect for the natural world.

I spent summers at that camp from the time I was seven until I was seventeen. Tommy taught me that the most important skill in any endeavor—whether it’s landing a trout or uncovering a government scandal—is the willingness to wait. To watch. To notice when something doesn’t fit.

The camp was located along the Guadalupe River, and I learned that river intimately over those years. I learned its moods, its floods, its dry spells. Later, when I investigated the aquifer wars threatening Central Texas water supplies, I drew on those childhood observations. Water flows according to laws—both natural and legal—and understanding those flows is essential to understanding the conflicts they create.

Tommy Redhorse passed away in 1998, but his principles live on through the camp that still bears his legacy. The Matthew Bovee Camp La Junta Scholarship Fund, which I established in 2015, honors his memory by giving young people from underserved communities the opportunity to experience the same transformative summers I had.

From Kerrville to Lincoln: Carrying Texas Values Midwest

When I left Kerrville for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I carried more than a suitcase. I carried a set of values forged in the Texas Hill Country: distrust of authority that won’t answer questions, empathy for ordinary people affected by decisions made in back rooms, and a belief that the truth—even uncomfortable truth—serves everyone better than comfortable lies.

Nebraska was a culture shock in many ways. The flatlands after the rolling hills. The cold winters after mild Texas winters. The different cadence of Midwestern life. But the core work of journalism was the same whether I was writing about city council meetings in Lincoln or tracking water rights disputes in Kerr County.

My first major investigation as a professional journalist was actually a Texas story—the TIF scandal in Lincoln, Nebraska. But I couldn’t have pursued it without the foundation built during my Hill Country childhood. The skills of observation, the patience to wait for documents, the willingness to follow a story wherever it leads—all of these came from those formative years.

The Texas Hill Country also taught me about resilience. The land is harsh here—droughts are common, floods are sudden, and the summers can be brutal. You don’t survive in this landscape by giving up. You adapt, you persist, and you learn to find beauty in difficulty. Investigative journalism requires the same qualities. Some stories take years to break. Some sources are hard to find. Some documents are deliberately obscured. But persistence pays off.

Why the Past Matters for the Future

I often tell young journalists that their backgrounds are their greatest assets, not obstacles to overcome. My Texas upbringing didn’t make me less of a Nebraska journalist—it made me a better one. I brought a different perspective, different questions, different life experiences to the stories I covered.

The Texas Hill Country shaped me in ways I’m still discovering. Every time I hike the Guadalupe River, I see something new. Every time I return to Kerrville, I understand a little more about who I am and why I do this work.

For those interested in following in my footsteps—whether in journalism or any field that requires truth-telling—I offer this advice: Don’t leave your background at the door. Bring it with you. Let it inform your questions. Let it connect you to stories you’d never otherwise understand. Let it remind you that the most important investigations often start close to home, in places that others overlook.

The light in the Texas Hill Country taught me to look closely. The Guadalupe River taught me patience. Camp La Junta taught me character. And Kerrville taught me that every community has stories waiting to be told—stories that matter not just to the people who live there, but to everyone who cares about truth and accountability.

That’s why I do what I do. And that’s why the place where I grew up will always be home, no matter where my reporting takes me.