Much later that afternoon, back on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, Daniela observed the dying light. While enjoying the trail switchbacks with Baylor, she now fought the urgency to leave the foothills—though there was something inside her which wanted to remain in that magical woodland forever. Off to the left, ten or fifteen meters away, she caught the sight of a fallen tree, downed from one of the many Pacific coastal storms which plow through the headlands in the winter. She visualized a long, graceful jump with Baylor, clearing the tree's trunk and the few dead branches which gave the obstacle the appearance of a carcass belonging to some imaginary beast.

It would be a gamble, she knew, as her young horse was only used to clearing artificial jump gates back at the club. It had been many months now since Daniela had lost interest in practicing for those formal equestrian jumping events she so enjoyed as a young girl. But then there was so much more these days she had lost interest in—things and events from her less complicated youth and the carefree times before her graduation from the university. They were all just too distant to her needs now. Too elementary as experiences. Was it all just going to be work now, and the sad memories of freer days? Would there ever be any new game-changing events in her life? The dismal prospects of this depressed her as she contemplated her return to work in the morning and the present dying of the light.

She approached the downed tree at a trot. She wanted Baylor to comprehend her intentions, to let him feel the parameters of the jump. The horse was insecure as he neared the obstacle and could sense Daniela's willfulness to jump it. He threw his head up, twitched his ears and stammered sideways with his powerful legs. He then whinnied angrily. In his own uncertainty and defiance Baylor threatened to rear up as she insisted with her heels. His second loud protest shattered the quiet of the clearing. An owl or some other predator bird cried out in the distance in response. The horse was adamant not to comply. Baylor as a simpler creature comprehended no reason to take the risk of a jump here, so far out in the wilderness. And Daniela began to sense in herself a familiar weakness of spirit to further command him. It became disturbing to her that, like so much in her present life, she felt so incapable of controlling him or anything else.

Quickly, she aborted all efforts to convince the animal otherwise with her leg signals and firm pressure on his bit through the reigns. She too, saw the challenge now for all its risks instead of any aesthetic joy it would have given them both. The idea of being so isolated with the prospect of injury either to her or Baylor had become too real, too prohibitive.

Daniela pulled his head strongly to the left in a homeward direction. She pressed her heels firmly into his flanks and loosened the reins in her own disappointment. Baylor seemed now too happy to comply. They accelerated to a gallop, navigating through the switchbacks and narrow paths to the more familiar fence-lined trails. Onward still, they cantered across the earlier trails to the manicured polo grounds of the Waverly Equestrian Club, just as nightfall set in.

Once at the club entrance Daniela dismounted stiffly. She led her horse by the reigns around the stable complex hurriedly in a cool-down before arriving at the paddock. As she entered the wooden structure she noticed that all of the eight other horses in the bungalow had been returned to their stalls for the night. As she placed him into his cubicle, Baylor drank water voraciously from his trough. She removed his saddle and bridle deftly. She toweled him off with a slow rhythm to calm the animal further down. Baylor's breathing had returned to a soft deep cadence. She slipped his thermal sleeping cover over his back while talking softly to him.

He was silent now, obviously exhausted from the day's ambitious ride, and Daniela pated his neck soundly and kissed him on his flat, hard cheek. With a last caress to his round hindquarter she tightly cinched the night cover one last time and closed the gate of the stall.

She walked out into the darkness, following the glow of the footlights. It was a winding path from the stable bungalows to the clubhouse dressing room. There, in front of a series of lockers, she opened one and removed her coat and car keys. Another woman was standing at the end of the benches, adjusting her clothing and peering into the generous mirrors with intense interest. It was Marylyn Sorenson, one of the middle-aged socialites who had frequented the club since Daniela began riding there as a child.

"Well sweetie, it's about time . . . I saw Baylor was still out and wondered about the two of you." Marylyn spoke slowly, pausing intermittently to apply her lip-liner. "I wasn't really worried, Dani. . .but you know, for heaven's sake . . . it's dark out there now, honey."

Daniela felt dutifully obliged to speak to her. "Thanks Mary. I was just. . ."

"Actually, I didn't see you anywhere on the trails today, Hon. Not even in the training ring." Marylyn finished her facial artwork and pursed her lips together between sentences. "Really, I haven't heard of you practicing in ages." She turned and looked at Daniela seemingly for the first time. "Have you given up jumping altogether, Dani?"

Daniela realized she had to give Marylyn some explanation of how things had changed, but actually was at a loss to express it.

 "Well, yes Mary. . . I've been busy with my work and . . . decided today to take Baylor out as far as. . ."

"Look, no excuses necessary, Kido. I'm sure you have your reasons."

Marylyn touched up the final glossing of her lips with a little finger. A dusty rose hue defined her somewhat wicked mouth as she tightened back her flawless, too youthful-looking blond hair into a ponytail. Daniela was closer to her now and watched her in the mirror. She could see the diamond earrings and the gold hoop bracelets as they cascaded gracefully down her tan, trim arm.

Marylyn's movements were quick and polished as she put her brush and cosmetics into her purse. She was like many of the wealthy women riders who frequented the Waverly club—only in her case her husband was a celebrity trial lawyer from the City, a fact she never seemed to tire of mentioning to people. To Daniela, Marylyn Sorenson had always looked like she had just stepped out of a limousine rather than off the back of a horse.

"No, really, Mrs. Sorenson. Everything's OK. But thanks for thinking about me. Baylor and I just did a little exploring today. We went a little ways out past the . . ."

Marylyn quickly glanced into her slim Rolex and muttered an imperceptible word. She then lurched back from the mirror and grabbed her purse off the sink. Without further comment, she blew Daniela an artificial kiss in the glass and swiftly strutted out of the dressing room toward the parking lot—her high-healed boots clicking into the early night.

Daniela moved forward toward the sink and glanced into the mirror. She mechanically washed her hands, cupping them afterward and quenching her thirst with handfuls of the cool tap water. She reached self-consciously into her coat pocket and slipped on her reading glasses.

In that quiet moment she took a long, close look at herself. A more mature and tired face stared back at her—it was a face she seemed to be morphing into lately at twenty-four without any warning. It was a countenance still with the innocence of a girl but now with a worried mien of uncertainty. Perhaps it was the disillusionment of the many things which had so plagued her during the last months. Nevertheless, it was a disturbing icon, this snapshot of herself there in the dim light of the clubhouse, and one she did not remember looking so harsh before in her young life.

Why was it she now felt so unhappy, so unfulfilled and unchallenged? Mechanically, she removed an elastic chord from her wrist and tied her damp hair back, away from her face. A look again into the glass revealed a young woman who seemed to be in the throes of some incarcerated servitude. It was a dismal sentence which threatened to last a lifetime.

It was, ironically, an image just the opposite of how she had felt an hour before, running freely in the countryside with Baylor. At least there she had some minor control of her path and life. Daniela could not easily explain the transition of those feelings, so alive in that alluring environment where she had ventured before dark. She could now only feel her present anxiety returning and that persistent gloom once again taking hold of her.

No doubt it was triggered by the inevitable passage home waiting for her—a dreaded journey across the Golden Gate Bridge--that cold, blood-colored conduit which spanned an eternal gap at the very edge of the world. This celebrated landmark would appear and disappear daily like a dream in the fog, with its detached Art Deco design and reputation as once the world's longest suspension bridge. It had been, since its inception, a complex boundary between an unruly and vibrant city--harboring an abundance of creative energy, and the quiet of the foothills and the barren coastline to the north.

But this metal and cable-strung monstrosity was also part of Daniela's own past through seeing it in all its moods and crossing it so many times. It served not only as a passageway ferrying a myriad of commuters back and forth over its deadly expanse—gritty city to posh suburbs each day and each night.

But it was also the "Golden Gate" which always seemed to her as a child, like the weather, to never be of the same temperament. It now served only as a northward reminder of her transition into that separate world of green and nature and joy. Her horse, the many summer evenings with family friends at the Club and a few inconsequential flirtations as an overly shy but Romantic adolescent.

Lately, however, the long, lonely bridge southward represented a sad, unbreakable tether back to the tedious, human entropy of the city. It was now dervish-like in its aggravation to Daniela. She loathed leaving the untamed hinterland north of the bridge--a land which defied progress, and offered through its dense forests and unpredictable fog, a sense of older excitement and hidden surprises.

The mountains and redwood forests above San Francisco had recently become for Daniela a wonderland of freedom through isolation—a magical place, if one were only so lonely or courageous enough to seek it out solitarily and embrace it as she had over the past several months.

The transformed image Daniela left in the mirror that evening upon returning home, devoid of a spirit, would soon be put on again and warn statue-like as she approached the parking lot of the club. She would wear it still as she entered the city where she was born and lived the greater part of her life. She would not, from this point, make any efforts to project her classical features with any such brio as she had earlier and effortlessly displayed in the forest. Her wild, unrestricted hair, the sensuous full lips, the expressive light brown eyes, were all now masked, put away for a time as yet she did not know.

As Daniela looked closer into the mirror, her rare, heroic image was again becoming camouflaged behind the glasses, the tied back honey locks, and her despised, unassertive demeanor. She seemed in that revealing snapshot a fully incarcerated young woman desperately on the edge of some transformation. Desperate to be brought back to a fountain of strength.

For now, she could only look forward to those fleeting hours when she returned to the mountains, north of the bridge with Baylor. For it was only there where any vitality could once again be found and nurtured—a forested world somewhere back on the mountain and off the designated trails. Only there, where riding swiftly through her secret patches of fog and wind, she could only envision her lost spirit.

As Daniela slipped on her coat and headed out to the empty parking lot, the last car—a cream-colored Mercedes Smart, was already covered with moisture from the setting in of night. She left the tree-lined drive, illuminated by the decorative lanterns on either side, and turned off onto a frontage road which proceeded for twenty minutes before connecting to the home-bound freeway. The headlights of the commuter traffic were now a long, unbroken string of ornaments, celebrating nothing.

While waiting in the congestion, she surreptitiously speed-dialed Nicasio, her boyfriend of five years. He answered her call in two rings.

"Hello Dani? Call me back later. I can't talk now." The phone line went dead.

She thought about redialing him but knew it would be equally as futile, and presently, she just could not bare another depressing thought. She placed her phone on the empty car seat next to her and monotonously followed along in traffic as it approached the great bridge and forty-five minutes of gridlock she knew was ahead of her into the City.

As Daniela eventually climbed the steep streets from the Presidio to the top of the Portola district near her home, she began to think once again about her dinner plans for the evening with Nicasio. Lifting the electronic garage door with a switch in her car, she entered the underground parking area below her parent's Victorian home. After turning off the engine, she just sat for a moment motionless in the dark.

Daniela forced an image of herself and Nicasio, dinning alone in the candlelight, as had been their plan for weeks. This brought a rare smile to her lips. She clutched her cell phone once more but resigned herself to the fact that he would not be truly responsive until they met later that evening at Rafael's restaurant to celebrate their anniversary. Together for five years. Presently Daniela made her way stiffly into the house with only a lasting, warm bath on her mind.

                                                                 *        *        *