The woman I bought Lacey Jay from when I was in my late twenties was scared to death of the big-boned appaloosa mare. The marbled, strawberry-colored horse knew it full well and had taken complete advantage of the woman's gentle nature.

The horse had refused to budge beyond the white gates of the riding stable for the six months the woman had owned her and boarded her there. During my test ride, I rode the horse right out of the gates after about a five-minute conversation in which I led her to understand that she wasn't going to do that to me, and I never looked back.

That woman was relieved to see the persnickety dotted beast go for the grand sum of $750. She was in the process of purchasing herself a nice beginner's horse with a more generous attitude, and the timing worked out well for all of us.

A chance encounter with Linda Tellington-Jones in the arroyo in the front of my Pojoaque house (she was riding a very cute Icelandic) changed the whole course of things for Lacey Jay and me. I'd just read an article about Linda in an airline magazine on the way home from a trip to see my parents. I'd had no idea she was officed around the corner. Anyway, I couldn't afford a TTouch practitioner, but I did manage to scrape up the money to buy one of her books. And I massaged that rascally mare completely into submission. Of the most relaxed and warm and fuzzy variety. That horse and I in fact became excellent friends. And on the back of my speckled soulmate, I learned the meaning of the word adventure.

In Ohio, where I'd grown up and done most of my riding, my experience had been limited to riding around the periphery of cornfields and through some fairly tame woodland paths and dirt roads. In the Pojoaque Valley, my property bordered native land and the barrancas--wild red cliffs and hills that leapt into the sky above the sandy creek bed and where you could ride for miles.

And miles.

It was, by my standards, and still is today, jaw-dropping rugged country. If you didn't watch where you were going, you'd find yourself in a high place surrounded by deep canyons with no way to get down. You had to be careful not to fall off. Or ride off. Or get run off. I got caught, boxed in, if you will, on those cliffs many times, and we'd have to find our way back.

You could ride through the deep gullies and arroyos that wound through the cliffs like scars or you could go cross country--up and down in undulating waves of stone. I remember that big athletic mare cruising down a steep, slate hill into the arroyo. I can still hear her raggedy breathe as we entered that tight place together. And then it was as if our minds intertwined, as we had to make the decision to go left, right or straight up again. I remember distinctly the horse waiting for me. Asking what it was I wanted to do. And sometimes, I let her decide. She was one smart mare. And sometimes I think she enjoyed showing me a thing or two.

One of my favorite places to ride was way up the back of the barrancas, the blood red rocks that seemed to have sprung from the earth just yesterday and about a million years ago at the same time, where I almost expected the earth to open up and swallow me and Lacey Jay, or for us to just tumble out of the grasp of gravity into the white sky above. We rode up through the serpentine arroyos that got more and more narrow until we were nearly at the top, along the spine. And if we ducked into a canyon on the left, we found ourselves in a small oasis of cottonwood trees and buffalo grass with the ruby walls rising up way above, and the sky just a slice of blue in the cliff's teeth.

I'd tether Lacey Jay to a tree, her girth loosened, or saddle off, give her a goody and a rub, and sit on my knees in the sand, in what was very nearly a cave, and dig and dig. Until I found it.

Water.

The invisible stream that always seemed like such a miracle to me. Way up there in the cliffs, in the middle of all that barren land.

I loved to watch the red liquid seep up from the desert, feel it rising up in Lacey Jay and me.