The Horse | Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas

In the whitewash of midday, the land looks the same. Dry, hot, barren rolling hills and steep cliffs. But in dusk, in the shadows of a pastel sunset, the land comes alive. Each cliffside, each mountain differentiates from the other. The smallest of indentions make the biggest shadows. The harshest mountains turn velvet.

This is a land where 80 feels like 90 and clothes must be shed along the way - but at least it's a dry heat, or so they say. This is a land where you wake up each morning congested from dust, yet the only thing to blow is blood. A land where eyes cry out for tears, sun burns on contact, skin turns to crepe overnight and should you choose to wash in the water of the earth you will enjoy a lovely white paste as sunscreen.

Here, a three-hour drive is really a five-hour drive, the average speed ranges from seven to ten miles an hour - at least if you want to keep your vehicle intact. And should you reach a section of the road not wash boarded, well surely it will be covered in Deeply entrenched rock as jarring as a fast trot on a choppy horse. Ladies get your sports bras out, I say. Men prepare to jiggle. There is simply no way around it.

From Agua Adentro Pens in Big Bend Ranch State Park, we ride south on Oso Loop, a jagged sawtooth razorback of a road which switches and swales into Bandidos Creek and the surrounding valley. But every road here is an irregular heartbeat - this one is no different.

A chipmunk startles at our approach. He scurries across the road into thick brush; no doubt crouched and watching us pass with beady eyes. Yesterday we saw a badger, and he saw us. He gave us one decisive look before scurrying underground – as if assessing the confrontation at hand. My horse watched for a moment, a stand-off of sorts. He has no care it seems and rides forward with gusto. He does this each time and each time I am amazed, grateful, at a loss for words. I have heard badgers can be violent, after all. Perhaps the horse is not aware.

Some things are difficult to write about. The horse is one of those.

Always The Horse, for he was and is and never will be really mine. I am defined by his presence; in disguise without him. It is how it should be. Perhaps someday, in his eventual loss, I will find the words to describe the vacuum left behind. The part of me which goes with him. An arm. A leg. A heart. I cannot think about losing him without leaking. He is my mentor, my confidant, my inspiration. Our bond requires no words; no words are available to describe it.

He is the one who gave me what I never had. He did so without knowing - without recourse or expectation other than grain and hay and water and a loving hand, a good scruff after a good ride. He is the cross I lean on, the platform I stand upon, the wind which pushes me forward. The soul I nurture. He has taught me to be myself.

In the mornings, I approach with coffee in hand. The sun glinting just so off his one blue eye, a glass eye, ever watchful. His nicker rolls softly across the draw. In his neck I inhale grassy plains. Snowcapped mountains. Desert basins. His smell is earth and sky together. It is a knowing deep within, a quiet unspoken trust. Lord knows how I earned this.

Because of him, I move forward. Because of him, I lope uphill. I climb above the shrouded forest and run through moonlight. Because of him, I have seen the perimeters of myself – I have seen where to cut fences and where to mend them.

When we travel, he needs me and I him. We are partners. When at home, he is with his herd and I am lost. An outsider.

You ask me to describe him yet still I struggle. Our love has always been a calming thing. A quiet thing. It is perhaps the only quiet love I have known.

He is what made me who I am and who I will be tomorrow. It is a lot to wrap up in one trail ride.