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The worst is true: Horses cost a ridiculous amount of money to keep. Even when they don’t intend to hurt you, they can. (When I say “hurt,” what I really mean is they can kill you.) And even though civilization itself could not have been forged without their strength and endurance, today they don’t serve many practical purposes (unless you’re Amish).

Has any of this stopped me from organizing my entire life around these four-legged wonders, these majestic creatures?

I think you know where this is going.

An editor at a fancy publishing house once sent back an essay I had written. How, she demanded to know, could I have possibly grown up owning horses if I was indeed raised in a trailer by a single mother and grandmother in the wilds of New Mexico? (Never mind the fact that this big-city lady had no concept of rural life nor the fact that a lot of Americans manage to have horses without belonging to aristocratic hunt clubs and such.)

I told her three words made it possible: Sacrifice. Determination. Delusion.

Some little girls seem to be born loving horses even when nobody in their family has any connection to them. But me, I always felt that I inherited my bone-deep love of them the same way I got my blue eyes and lumpy thighs – passed down from one generation to the next. My grandmother was an equestrian, as was my mother, and my rancher uncle made sure I had my first pony by the time I was five. But I had already been galloping around the living room on hobby horses as soon as I could walk.

Buying a horse is a huge expense for any single mother but especially for my mother, who had been left bankrupt by a man she married when I was seven. She co-signed a loan he needed to start a flower shop; I still believed in Santa but even I wasn’t surprised when this guy left with somebody else, taking with him the small amount of money she had inherited from a relative. Lucky for me, getting a horse could be free if you took the ones nobody else wanted, or could handle. “Well darlin’, if you can catch him, you can have him,” is the way it usually went.

Feeding them, stabling them, buying tack (saddles and bridles), getting them shod, paying vet bills – now that is the endless, gaping maw that eats all your Benjamins.

A daughter with a horse is like having a daughter plus the responsibility of an extra child who will never grow up and get a job. Yet for me, not having a horse was never even discussed. Mom took all the double shifts at the hospital and weekend side jobs she could. It was always death-do-us-part. I sometimes wonder if she wanted to give me something as big, strong and reliable as a horse because she so desperately wanted to provide a caring father in my life but could never secure one.

This is how I measured the commitment Mom had to me having horses: She wore the same pair of black cowboy boots from the time I entered elementary school until I started college. She never bought herself anything on our spending sprees at the TG&Y, but instead waited until my aunt cleaned out her closet and shipped the castoffs in cardboard boxes. Our ’67 station wagon doubled as a truck, hauling hay bales and grain sacks; she kept it running with bailing wire until 1982 when she hit a pothole going 25 miles an hour and the rusted frame cracked.

Still, Mom made sure I had riding lessons from the time I was old enough to sit on a horse.

What I am trying to tell you is that when people talk about “family values,” mine have four legs and eat alfalfa. I have kept true to them all my life, and it has been one of the reasons I’ve called Southern California home for so long.

Even in the midst of high-rises, you can feel the agrarian roots of this region, finding dedicated pockets of horse communities sprinkled far and wide, from the stables of L.A.’s Atwater Village smashed up against the 5 Freeway, to the cowboy wonderland of Norco in Riverside County, to the elegant jumping arenas of San Juan Capistrano – and dozens more. While my friends were buying nice suburban homes, I was still renting any rattrap near a barn just so I could keep arranging my days around my afternoon ride.

I have so many times traded great career opportunities in big cities like Paris and New York for the feeling of constant, true partnership with another living thing, and for the feeling of being connected to the natural world. For a horse’s sweet breath and the sleek summer coat on a bay, a gray, a chestnut.

I’m married now and settled in Orange Park Acres, an equestrian community full of bridle paths in Orange County that dates back to 1928. Our place is small and old, but boasts the all-important stalls and a paddock out back. I said “I do” to the rare man who understands why I would give “my kingdom for a horse,” to quote Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” We’re raising a son who knows what it means to muck a stall and feed the animals in the morning, who understands that the happiness and well-being of another creature depend on his help and care.

In today’s world, finding a sense of responsibility and interconnectedness is elusive. It’s also easy to forget to feel awe and humility – feelings I have every day when I look at something as grand as a horse. I sometimes think I have measured out my life in trots and canters. And I would do it all again.

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