¶ … Horses My earliest meaningful experience with nature occurred when I was an eight-year-old child. My family took a vacation to New Mexico to visit one of those family friends that I called Uncle Joe, though he was not actually related to me in any way that I could discern. Uncle Joe had been a Vietnam War veteran, and, even as a child, I could tell that part of Uncle Joe stayed in Vietnam, though it would be years before I even realized that Joe had gone to war and longer still before he began to explain to me some of the experiences he had there. When he came home, he became involved in some type of business, which was apparently a profitable one, and he moved from his hometown to a ranch in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. To this day, I could not tell you the exact location of the ranch, only that the drive there seemed to take forever and I remember a feeling of complete desolation in the long desert stretches of the drive.

For much of the vacation, I was a forgotten addition to the trip. Uncle Joe was older than my parents, but younger than my grandparents, but his world was one that was strictly for grown-ups. It was not that Joe disliked children; it was more like he was completely unsure how to interact with me, so he did not. While the grown-ups visited, whiling away hours playing card games in Joe's little bunk house, I began to explore his ranch. I had been expecting big pastures full of grass and fat, happy cows when I was told that I would be going to a ranch. Instead, Joe's home was somewhere on a mountain side, and...

I found creeks, trails, and even a little underground cave heading into a mountain, and I explored them fearlessly as only an eight-year-old with no real knowledge of poisonous snakes, predators, and the very real dangers that could come with getting lost on a mountain, where the daytime temperatures could approach the hundreds, but frost still touched the ground each morning.
My experience as a forgotten child ended early one morning when I woke to find Uncle Joe shaking my foot. "Time to get up," he said, and then headed out of the little bunk room where I slept. When I woke up, my mother was awake, packing lunches for me. "Joe's taking you horseback riding," she said with an enthusiasm I did not feel. My opinion of Joe, who had taken on a mythical quality in my little child mind, had soured when I realized that the fascination was completely one-sided. However, I knew that once my mother had an idea in her head, it was going to happen, so that arguing with her would be futile.

We went out to a trough outside of Joe's home. I had seen horses at his house, though I had been cautioned to stay out of their pasture, and there were two huge animals saddled and ready to go. I remembered thinking how much larger they looked now that I was close to them. Joe swung himself up easily on a big roan horse, then looked down at me, gave a disgusted shake of his head, dismounted, and tossed me up on my horse, a slightly smaller gray…