Everybody out here is escaping something, I said. Or running toward something, she replied. I am reminded of a poem from three years back. “I shall be an old woman in the desert, sitting under the moon and stars. Listening, looking: a symphony of crickets, a warm breeze, a light across the mountain - ranchers and rangers making their rounds - coyotes singing, horses on hay - a satisfied groan in the distance - the easy settling of structures as night falls. Wine glass to my l

Death has been on my mind lately. This land is full of it, marked, unmarked. Animals, humans, plants. A land that once thrived – or as close as you can get to it along the scorching border. Terlingua Abaja. Castolon. Hannold. Mariscal. Johnson's Ranch. Glenn Springs. To live here, often meant to die here. La Coyote Cemetery, Big Bend National Park La Coyote: Twenty-one unnamed but not forgotten graves. Some surrounded and covered by river rock, others with a meticulously craf

I followed a bear this morning, along a lush desert trail, past prickly pear in bloom, down a gravel wash with over-reaching roots, into a densely shaded spring - a hole in the desert, a life source. Bent, dry ocotillo and cane cholla flanked me on the uphill side, lush and green desert on the low. A good reminder of how little nature cares, how quickly life can change, how sometimes just being in the right place at the right time can be so important. I set out early today, p

In the morning, trying to catch the springs in solitude, I am the only one on this rocky, caliche road and as such can move freely – adapting to her contours, her corduroy ridges, shifting from side to side then leaning in close. This is not a road to be sped down; she makes you take your time, look around, pay attention. Along the Rio Bravo, the sun is just now welcoming the world, tidying up from the night before, rippling along with the river current. I hear the hot spring

El Capitan, Guadalupe Mountains National Park Which do you like better, I was asked the other day, riding or writing? Riding, I replied...

Weather in Big Bend is a work of art. The light-play on velvet, mountains stretched across a powder blue sky, only a thin rake of clouds to curtail the day and then nothing. The sun’s wake is splashed unhindered in every possible direction. Water - translucent, opaque, murky, stagnant, trickling, flooding. The lifeblood of the desert, sculptor of rock and earth, mover of stone and brush. The dictator of survival. Her calling card a vocal perfume of musk and dust and petrichor

This isn’t a story about finding yourself, there are enough of those already. I am the woman I always was; she is simply untethered now....

We make our way over to High Gates Road, cutting across this valley of tumbleweed and cactus, of open grasslands under a cobalt sky, and...

I sent photos of mountains with their little white caps, of rolling fields of gold, of sun-warmed foothills and glowing waves. Then I...

Between Cedar and Oak Tree Canyon a heifer shuffles off, her molasses licking disrupted by our approach. Her body a rug of black, her...

When I was a girl, my favorite color was tulle. The blush of a tutu. The satin of a pointe shoe. I believed. When I was a young woman, my...

If you drive to the far west tip of Texas, if you brave Interstate 10 and unending desert highways, you will be rewarded with views of...

Black Gap WMA, TX I set out to erase a memory last weekend - it’s not the first time – repeating a trip taken before, rinsing to remove...

As the horse pushes forward, I close my eyes, hips moving in syncopated rhythm with his. I reach out, caressing the wind, and slide further into the depths of my mind. He is the calming of my wild. He knows all my secrets. As night falls I sit, watching this muse stretch his legs inside a portable hot-wire fence and a backdrop of silk stroked by the rising moon. And there is nothing else to do but let the day roll off us both. The buzz of an occasional mosquito and the distan

From Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River, the Comanche Trail runs south to Fort Stockton / Comanche Springs and there, if you veer...

Sometimes you must ride through the bones of the past to see the pure sparkling brilliance of the future. It seems such a simple thing,...

What makes a cowgirl? The hat? The boots? The horse pushing and spinning until the herd has settled and all are found? No. Cowgirl is a...

If you travel enough eventually the names of places, natural and unnatural, begin to repeat – forming some kind of staccato rhythm as you...

I don’t count miles when I ride, it’s not about them anyway. Often, I turn or cut back before trail end. Before climbing the summit – but...