Many years ago Dick Geary told me that I’d always have a horse when I wanted to take an afternoon off and go for a ride.

Dick and I never met in person. We communicated through weekly check-in emails and our columns. Both of us were bound to Montana - Dick was born into a Helmville ranching family; I had married a fly-fishing guide - but we each had a place in the world we held on to and wrote about frequently; a place that had shaped us as youth. For me, it was New Zealand. For Dick, it was Brazil. We each had a boot in a land that still gripped us, and maybe that was why we connected he...