When I was 21 and at loose ends about what to do with my life, I left college and went to work on a horse farm and riding stable in Wisconsin. I had heard from friends in my college town that one could work at the farm for room and board, caring for the horses, planting and harvesting some of their food, and leading trail rides on the 640 acres of mostly wooded property.

I arrived at the end of January, on a clear night sharp with cold, to find that most of the workers had gone to the bar in town. But I encountered one who invited me to take a ride with him. For an hour or two, we followed a path through the woods, our way lit by moonlight, and the horses’ steady footsteps nearly the only sounds in the deep snow. Unfamiliar with the route, I trusted my companion when we made our way to the empty road, turned sharply, and started back toward the farm.

When his horse sped up to a trot and then a gallop, I followed suit on mine. When he shouted, “Turn here,” I also turned – not realizing that he meant at the driveway some yards ahead. I was now barreling straight for a barbed wire fence. But my horse knew, and stopped short.

I flew over his head, landing half on the hard-packed road, half in the snow. I survived the fall with a sore back and a taste for grand adventure that I am not always quite prepared for. I spent a year on that farm, leading many more galloping trail rides back to the barn. That first one was my only spill, but every one thereafter was both touched with a certain anticipation of disaster, and filled with the exhilaration of the moment. I have since come to believe that one has to jump off a cliff, literally or figuratively, every so often in one’s life, in order to experience what each of us might never have planned.