SADDLE UP

B.J. REED STOOD ON A granite outcropping just west of Grand Teton National Park, a barren, windy spot that, at an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet, felt like the top of the world. Her sunbleached hair hung loose under her cowboy hat, its brim throwing her weathered face into shadow. She placed her hands on her hips, planted her feet wide, surveyed the snowy slopes and flower-studded meadows far below, and began to sing:

She might not show up,
She might not call,
She loves to ride horses and that’s about all.

I glanced over at my 15-year-old daughter, Daisy, and grinned. We were on the third day of a four-day horseback camping trip. My tush was killing me, and I’d discovered muscles in my legs that no amount of yoga had ever reached. Even a short walk at this altitude left me breathless. And yet I was elated, my spirits higher than the mountain; I never wanted this moment to end.

I HAVE ALWAY SFANCIED myself a daughter of the West. My great-grandparents fled czarist Russia at the turn of the 20th century to become homesteaders in a new world, pursuing the frontier promise of freedom and reinvention. Theirs was not the typical Jewish immigration story, but neither was it unique: Nearly a thousand of their Eastern European compatriots joined the land grab around that time. Given the harshness of the conditions, few stayed long, but my relatives stuck it out in the Dakotas for