I think about Heraclitus when I ride. He said, “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” For ten years or so I’ve ridden pretty much the same 700 acres of ranch trails, but it’s never the same ride twice.

For three and a half years I’ve been renting a house on that coastal California ranch where I ride. I told myself this would be a transitional place after one of those curves life throws at you. But as the months go by I realize I am deeply happy here, in the savoring-it-every-day kind of way that you usually don’t recognize until too late. There’s a view of the ocean and no neighbors in sight. I drift off at night to the coyotes’ howls and the soft hoots of the great horned owls that roost in the pine trees outside my bedroom window.different ride altogether.