The rider had been out since before sunrise. He waved us over to the edge of the rim, where the ground simply stops and the valley starts four hundred feet below.

A horse that knows the trail

"She picks the line," he said, and let the reins go slack. The mare walked the ledge like a sidewalk. We walked it like a tightrope.

Out here the old trails are still the best ones. They follow water, shade and the way the rock breaks, and they were here long before the highway.

You don't ride out to the rim. You let the horse take you there.

Back by noon

By midday the heat had flattened the shadows and the butte looked like a cut-out pasted on the sky. We drove on to Monument Valley with the windows down.