THIS HAPPY PLACE
Ben Bussard is a happy kid. Age 11, he bursts out the door, BB gun in tow, and scrambles down the hill to Wolf Creek below the family’s log cabin. He and his best buddies will spend all day swimming, fishing, and floating down the current on their log raft. At night, instead of heading home, they will camp out next to a fire, swapping stories about their wild adventures.
In tiny Lipscomb, a flyspeck village cradling a verdant creek valley in the far northeast corner of the Panhandle, “I can go anywhere I want for miles and miles and miles,” beams the boy, who sports dusty blue jeans and a widebrimmed Stetson over cropped blond hair. Ben’s been to Dallas and a few other big Texas cities, but he doesn’t care for them one bit. “There’s not much to do there,” he says glumly. “You can’t just go outside for a walk or go exploring by yourself. An adult has to be with you.”
Ben’s parents smile as they listen to their young buckaroo describe his escapades along Wolf Creek and beyond. “We’re glad Ben can grow up here,” says his mother, Tanja Bussard, speaking of a town that at first glance looks like an abandoned frontier outpost on the edge of civilization.
Lipscomb, pop. 44, is the county seat of one of the most sparsely settled regions of Texas. It lacks everything urbanites would consider essential: reliable cell phone service and electricity, gas stations,
