This afternoon I ride not because someone needs to be trained. Not because someone need rehabilitation and physical therapy. Not because someone is getting fat and needs the exercise. Not because someone is standing at the gate begging to go too, me too, me too, dancing on pie-plate-sized hooves, pleading with jet black eyes.

No.

This afternoon, I ride because I need to.

My long-legged quarter horse mare Pinon swings into a walk the moment my butt is in the saddle, and I don’t mind. I gather up the reins and we are off. With the heeler dogs glued to our tail.

I won’t let the long, lean horse run full out to start. I’m smarter than that. And she needs to warm up. Not to mention that I’m a woman with a strong sense of self-preservation. Miss Pinon can run so fast your heart will leap right out of your mouth and get left behind in the dust on the ground, still beating like a tom tom, if you don’t watch out. I am not exaggerating.

We chew up the hills by the railroad tracks twisting a serpentine path to the south, a Centaur shadow accompanying us. I cast a look over my shoulder for the heelers, whose ragged breathe suggests they are exactly where their name implies, and I worry that the steam locomotive mare will give them a heart attack. We are so tall, our legs stretching impossibly long, the red canyon walls can’t hold us in. We almost spin off the earth, until I am relieved to feel each hoof strike the ground, and suddenly I’m a four-legged creature too. The horse tries to come in under the bit for more rein and more speed because she just wants to go fast.

Fast.

I swear we could beat the AT&SF if it came roaring by right now.

I let the quarter horse go.

We outrun The Chihuahua from the office, the surly stupid bureaucrat with a grudge, who couldn’t do what we’re doing right now for love nor money. Here, that squat creature from the nether realms simply doesn’t count. We race ahead of the pain that’s been twisting beneath my ribs like a knife for way too long. We race ahead of outpatient surgical procedures. We race ahead of beautiful boys who die young. We race ahead of food shortages and soaring gas prices and terrorists and all of the Reverend Wrights and the snake handlers and the clutch on the pickup that needs to be replaced and a kid entering junior high school next fall and alarm clocks everywhere.

We race with the sun as the mare wheels on a dime, frothing, as I’m whispering settle, settle, easy there, big girl, laying a hand on her steaming neck until we head for home with the heelers’ eyes nearly popping out of their heads in dogged determination to keep up with this brilliant blaze of fire we have become no matter what. No matter what. We race for home because Dennis will be worried if we stay out after dark, afraid we’ll burn up--woman, horse and heeler sparks combusting out of control--and he’ll come looking for us like a one-man cavalry on his head-tossing Arabian horse Morningstar, and oh my goodness, it sure feels good to be loved like that.

Pinon’s ears flatten against her head and we are all git out for what is not nearly long enough.

We nearly outrun the archons themselves.