The Chocolate Woods

Howard County this morning was socked in with warm, damp fog. The farm was floating green and nothing else. The fence lines blended into the white sycamore tree trunks which blended into the fog which blended into the gray, overcast sky. No shadows. The occasional dark gray smudge moved in the light gray fog, a horse. There was no wind. There was no noise.

We cast off from Harwood, the historic farm just down the road. The barns there are painted lemon yellow. The fence rails are black. The corn is down, early because of the summer drought. The landing strips through the cornfields were bright green, where the biplanes landed before WWII. The green was dusted with dew. I wore a brown wool tweed with a dark green stock tie and my brown hunt cap. I rode my chestnut paint mare Hannah. Hannah together with my coat and my tie blended into the harvested corn, the turning tulip trees, the red maples, the browning oaks, the green landing strips and the evergreens. The hounds were white and brown and black specks, glimpsed only here and there. There was still no wind. The fog was still dense. The sun little more than a light spot in the gray sky.

In the quiet windless woods the horses steamed and the steam rose up and blended in with the fog, which blended in which the gray sky. The yellow leaves of the sassafras and tupelo undergrowth were bright against the dark mud of the trails. The woods smelled powerfully -- of root beer from the sassafras, of onion from the wild chives, of peppermint from the shrubs, and of tomatoes and chocolate somewhere in the mud. The crickets were awake and chirping, loudly. No birds.

Our hounds hit within 5 minutes, tore through the cornfield in the back corner of Harwood, and put the fox to ground in the bog behind the old wooden house on the honeysuckle ridge. We watched them go down the hill -- altogether and flat out. We ran flat out too, 100 yards away, parallel to them through the rolling corn field. Everyone was turned to watch the hounds, both horses and humans. The occasional "look at that!" and "they're so beautiful!" rose from the field into the fog. The soft, windless air reddened our cheeks as we ran through it. We ran after them into the chocolate woods, through the cedar trees, and stopped short on the honeysuckle ridge, breathing the forest into our lungs.

The morning spread out thereafter in three pungent, soft, moist, dark, matte-hued hours. We picked our way along the upper Patuxent River, following the hounds to the north and west. We went deeper and deeper into the woods, miles off of any marked road or plotted property. Our horses were cushioned by the mud and the leaves and the soft, chocolaty woods. The air balanced perfectly between pleasantly cool and pleasantly warm. The river water brisk and chatty, sparkling darkly without much light. We parked for some time on its banks, deep down in the muddy bottom, listening for the huntsman's horn. The occasional yellow maple leaf drifted down and into the mild rapids, the crickets chirped, the undergrowth dripped, the mossy logs settled and creaked, the horses sighed and stamped. The steam rose from their flanks.

The humans strained to listen, in silence. After a time, the horses stopped grazing, stopped shifting, lifted their heads and turned to listen for the horn, too. Silence but for the crickets and the river. The river became almost overbearingly loud in the quite of the deep bottom, rushing past granite rocks and under fallen logs and moss, eddying in whirlpools. It still sparkled darkly, no brighter than the light of the gray fog and gray sky or the white sycamore trunks. Our piece of the woods a slice of silent, vibrant, color sandwiched between gray and white. The modern-day world had vanished entirely.

Then we heard it, away off towards Hipsley Mill, out the other side of the Patuxent River bottom and across three open corn fields behind the back of Annapolis Rock. Floating through the root beer and the tomato and the onion smells. The hounds baying and the horn confirming it. Along the river banks. Carried through the fog on the still, damp warm, air. Quietly and very far away. But we heard it. The horses heard. The crickets heard it. And we were off….

Conditions for Scenting Have Changed

Yesterday, one of the coldest days of the winter, we went foxhunting. Not only did we go on the coldest day, we stayed out longer than usual -- a total of five hours. We ran three foxes across three of our fixtures (Pleasant Prospect, Harwood and Annapolis Rock) and ended up in a different county. Highlights:

I had a hard time getting my boots on in the morning because I was wearing two pairs of socks, long underwear and breeches. Once I did get them on, there was a strange "tight" sensation around my upper calf.

I had a hard time getting on my horse because I had so many clothes on. In addition to the long underwear and breeches, I had on long-sleeve wicking Under Armor, a turtle neck heating Under Armor, a thick Shire shirt, a wool-backed canary vest, and my very heavy wool coat. Also, I had on two pairs of gloves so my fingers didn't bend. I thought that I had better not fall off because if I couldn't get on the horse very well from a mounting block, imagine trying to get on from the ground.

I had nothing on my ears.

The footing was so bad -- icy and slippery -- that all one could do was sit in the middle of one's horse and let him do whatever he needed to do to keep his balance. They had to work extra hard running uphill because more effort was required to make progress. They didn't have to work very hard at all running downhill because we just slid all the way down.

Baxter, a horse being ridden by our friend Sarah, didn't manage to keep his balance and wiped out going too fast around a corner on a sheet of ice. He went down and basically pile-drove poor Sarah into the ice. The ice was so strong it didn't crack, not even with the impact of both Baxter and Sarah. Sarah went home, bruised and somewhat dazed.

This little mishap occurred right as we were coming out of the woods and running hard through the cornfields at Harwood (we sometimes refer to this as "blowin' and goin'). We took off in a flat out gallop along the corn and Baxter, now that he was rid of Sarah, came with us. I was last in line because the rest of the field was stuck behind Sara on the ice sheet. I saw Baxter and observed he had no rider. "Loose horse!" I told Carter and Crystal in front of me -- "If Baxter passes you, try to stop him!" They didn't realize until later that I meant stop him because he has no rider. Baxter was fine though. He had no desire to be in front of anyone, just didn't want to be left behind. So then Crystal and I had to pony him all the way back to Sarah which was no fun because neither my horse, nor Crystal's horse, nor Baxter wanted to leave the action.

After we sent Baxter and Sarah home we had to find the field again. For a while we successfully tracked the field on the ice and snow through the woods. Every time the trail we were on intersected with another trail, we'd stop and listen for the hounds or for the huntsman's horn and look for which way the tracks went. It was just three of us (me, Crystal and Rebecca) plodding along through the evergreens in the snow. It was very quiet in the woods, no wind. It was like Narnia. Eventually we decided to climb a little hill in the woods to see if we could hear better. At the top of the little hill, we finally heard the huntsman's horn. But all three of us pointed to a different direction. over there! no! over there! no! over there! The problem is the horn echoes off the hills so it's not always clear exactly where the huntsman is. We stood again and listened. After a few sessions of pointing in three different directions and helplessly giggling at our uselessness, we slowly reached consensus that the horn must be coming from down by the river on the other side of the hill we had just come over. We set off. After following the horn back through the evergreens and out into one of the massive cornfields at Harwood, we finally saw staff and galloped toward them and followed the staff until we ran into the Huntsman himself with his hounds, and so we parked on a trail and then, finally, saw the field with Carter in the lead. We had been on our own for about 45 minutes but we were very proud of ourselves getting found.

And this was only two hours in to our 5 hours odyssey.

We kept hunting to the west. We covered all of Harwood and ended up at Annapolis Rock. It was so cold the river was frozen and in places, frozen so solid it we walked across on our horses without breaking through. Some streams we did break through and our horses plunged into the frozen chunks of ice and mud up to their hocks. It only took a few of these crossings for our horses to decide to forget about manners and just jump the streams entirely. This made for lots of hooting and hollering and arm flailing from us because we weren't necessarily expecting to launch into the air, especially at the wider streams.

By this time we were a field of only six -- all women, all riding our manly horses. We sat in the woods for a while by the pond at Annapolis Rock waiting for the Huntsman to round up loose hounds and talked about how one day we'd be old and gray and toothless sipping gruel through a straw but still be hunting and talking about all those men we used to know who had since dropped dead with their weak hearts and feeble constitutions and how we'd tell small children that yes, there used to be men who rode horses but they were never as good as the women so they gave up but it's not just a fairy tale, it really was like that once.

At this point Carter -- who was our master that day -- announced, "Look. Conditions for scenting have changed." Sue Warfield, right behind her, said, "The sun is fading." Jennifer said, "The temperature is dropping." Crystal said, "the wind is blowing." I said, "the snow is falling." Then we all laughed hysterically. It was so ponderous and pompous and haiku-like and impromptu that we just loved it.

Still, we stayed out another hour after that. We began to get truly frozen. We bivouacked on a hill while the wind whistled around our ears. We tried to get in the lee of the hill to stay a little warm. We put the storm collars up on our coats. Crystal and I lay on our horses necks because it actually does keep your torso and ears a little warmer. We waited and waited for the hounds -- they had split and were who knew where. The huntsman's horn was drifting up from the river bottom but we didn't dare go down to it for fear of turning the fox. We got so cold we began to get silly. I watched the snow. "Is that snow coming out of the sky or off the trees?" All: "It's COMING OUT OF THE SKY KIM YOU IDIOT!"

Once we had rounded up most of the hounds (we never did find two of them) we were still an hour from home. We walked and walked and walked in the frozen gray day. Walking. Walking. Freezing. Walking. Freezing. We couldn't run anymore because Crystal's horse had lost shoe and was very gimpy on the ice. I said to someone that my head was so cold I might just stick it in the oven when I get home to try to warm it up. Others aid, "ah! That sounds lovely!"

We got back to the barn and sat on our horses, dreading getting off. There are very few things as painful as dismounting from a horse when your toes are very very cold. We all tried to slide off, holding on as long as possible to minimize the force of the impact. "OW, MY TOES HURT!" By this time it was almost 5 p.m. and getting dark and we headed into the lodge for chili and cornbread.
The only thing left to do was hang around the farm until 7:30 for the monthly Board meeting, which Carter, Crystal, Dale and I all had to attend. We sat in front of the fire and ate pizza and stuffed Hunt Club envelopes and tried desperately to get warm.

When the meeting finally happened, it was a feckless and hilarious meeting. Our President was in a silly mood and declared he wanted "more skullduggery in the Old Fashion Race this year!" He also asked if we thought it would be a good idea, on days when the footing was too slippery for horses, to go out hunting on foot. I looked at him. "On our people feet, you mean?" Yes. Everyone scowled. "I saw on TV that if you put stockings over your shoes you can walk anywhere!" he said. "Do you think that's a good idea, Kim?" "No! Horses have twice as many legs as we do! We'd fall over! And I don't believe the stocking thing. You'd get runs." Dale said, "anyway, we can't run that fast." Idea quashed.

Finally, at 10:30 at night, it was time to crawl into bed under the warm covers with the cats and go to sleep.

Aqueous Humor

As some of you may know, on Thursday I worked from bed. Yes. Not just from home but literally from bed. I was not sufficiently motivated to get up and so I did not, and instead had a productive, fruitful and restful day working from bed, courtesy of Verizon Wireless. When I was done working, I went to…uh…bed.

By Friday I was exceedingly well-rested and totally sick of chez moi so I went to the farm for what ended up being a very soggy muddy and eventful weekend.

Friday

• My friend Rebecca and I ride out on Friday afternoon. I ride Burton and she rode Baxter for the first time. Baxter is red and oddly put together.
• We went out with two other people, one of whom is visiting from England and who looks at me as we get into the second hay field (she has no idea where she is going) and says, "can we Andale Andale?" I say, "You want to Andale Andale?" "Yes, I want to andale andale." "Burton! Andale Andale!" And we were off!
• During the andale, I look back to see how Rebecca is doing on Baxter. She is not having a good time. Baxter is carrying himself along like a camel, head straight up in the air, feet pawing forward.
• I take pity on he and we go in and leave the other two to andale some more. We put Baxter the Camel in the wash stall. We think about going up to Apt. B to have some wine. But the camel gets agitated when we move away from it. It bleats. Like a sheep. It swings and shuffles around in the wash stall. Head very high. "We can't leave the camel," I say. "True," Rebecca says. "True." Rebecca gets a phone call so leaves the barn to take it and the camel wails and moans. I go stand next to it. Looking up at his nostrils because his head, being a camel, is so high up in the air. The camel is comforted by the smell of my hair I guess, and slowly stops making noise and swinging around. By the time Rebecca comes back the camel's head is resting on top of my head. Nice camel.
• Then I decide to do the evening chores for Dale. Evening chores at the farm takes about two hours with two people helping. First thing was we had to drop hay from the hay loft onto the gator. That's fun. Dale goes up and throws hay bales out and I make sure they land properly in the gator. One gets covered in hay dust. We can get ten bales on the gator. Then I drove the gator away with all the hay with one arm out backwards to make sure the hay didn't fall off. It wobbled back and forth a lot but did not come off (I drive the gator a little too fast anyway so that doesn't help).
• Then we have to set the feed out in the stalls in which we have just put all the hay Then we have to go get all the horses who live in stalls in from the fields for their dinner. Then we have to feed the horses who live outside. It's a 200 acre farm so there's a lot of driving in the gator. Then we have to set feed for the next morning. This is all done in total silence. I don't know how to set feed so Dale did that while I drove the gator all around at top speed bringing horses in, putting horses out, and driving feed all over for the outside horses. The most fun was, of course, bringing in Kona. He was at the far end of his 50 acre paddock and came RUNNING all the way up the hill for his dinner and then was blowing so hard he stopped quickly and was run over by Manny who was right behind him. Ding a ling.
• Then Rebecca and Dale and I went up to Apt. B. and ate "round things," (fresh figs, cherry tomatoes, round water crackers, brie, wine).
  
  
  Saturday
• Saturday was pouring rain all day and so Dale insists that we go out and do interval training on our horses. The intervals were to be 5 minute trot, 3 minute walk, 5 minute gallop, 3 minute walk, 5 minute trot, etc.
• But it was truly pouring rain so it was like being on a shipwreck. I couldn't see anything, water dripped off my hat onto my hands so I kept dropping the reins, even with gloves on, I would shake my head to get the water off and it would spray all over me, my jeans were stuck to my body, rain dripped down under my collar, the mud from Dale's horse in front of me was everywhere. The rain would come in sheets and it was like getting hit by a truck when it came across the fields.
• But it was warm. So it was like doing intervals in a hurricane or something. Or in the Caribbean. Very strange.
• Burton got covered in foam from the work (interval training is hard) but when we were done we just took off the tack and left him in his field because there was not point in bathing him. He self-bathed.
  
  
  Sunday
• Hunting at Annapolis Rock. Bright sun. Wet woods. Deep mud.
• We had no men at all out so Mary Anne Ridgely, the Katharine Hepburn of Howard County, led the field with Carter behind her and me behind Carter. About 12 others were (supposed to be) behind us, including Rebecca. Temporarily, at least.
• It was so warm and wet that as we moved along through the woods our horses steamed. The hounds ahead of us steamed too. We could always find Barry our huntsman just by looking for his steam. The steam was billowing off of everybody, like smoke from a chimney on a cold day. Waves and waves of steam. We were like a traveling sauna. From afar we looked a little blurry from all the steam, as if someone took a photograph but overexposed the horses. The hounds were a little traveling steam sauna too. We had blue sky, wet dripping leaves, ripe smelling mud, and steaming animals.
• The corn is still standing so the usual fun of running at Annapolis Rock was hampered. We tried though -- around a cornfield of standing corn, which is, to be honest, pretty dangerous. You have to stay to the edge but the trees are low hanging on the edge so you have to run inside the first row of corn without letting the corn itself rip you from your horse and without veering too close to the trees or else you'll get decapitated.
• Running through corn is very hard on your knees. The corn gets between your horse and your stirrups so you have to let your legs go like jelly so you don't put up too much resistance. If you fight the corn, you're a goner. Instead, you let the corn lift your legs up around you so your feet are up practically on your horse's back and then you grab mane and pinch your knees and try not to lose your balance. Your knees hit the corncobs whack whack whack as you go. Your feet hit your horse which makes your horse go faster which makes you knees get whacked whacked whacked more and then you go down hill and around a corner and everything gets a little more desperate and extreme and you pray for your horse and you pray for yourself and you daren't raise your head too high because you might get whacked by a tree and then you stop suddenly BAM and you realize you are still on your horse and your knees are completely black from corn dust.
• When we were done knocking ourselves silly around the cornfield we realized everyone was gone. The only people left were me and Mary Anne and Carter, and the huntsman with the hounds. Carter says, "Mary Anne, I think you lost your field." Mary Anne: "What? Why?! (pronounced Whaaa?)." Carter: "I think they all came off back there." Mary Anne: "So who we got left, why it's just you and Kim!" And indeed it was. Just us three with our very black, bruised knees. We three looked like we had knee pads on but it was corn dust.
• The only adventure we had after that was there is part of the Patuxent we have to cross where there is a beaver dam. We call it The Beaver Dam. Duh. Anyway, you can't cross upstream of the beaver dam itself because the river is too deep and we didn't feel like going swimming. Downstream of the dam there is no way into the river at all. Just three foot banks sheer down into the water. Barry our Irish huntsman decides the only way is to leap of the bank across a little tributary onto an island made of rocks and then on across. He looks back at us three women with our black knees and says in his Irish brogue, "Well I did it just fine as you can see but I don't know how you all will manage." We ladies with black knees found this rude of our huntsman so we each promptly launched gracefully off the river bank, floated through the air with the greatest of ease, landed effortlessly and lightly on the rock island without hurting our horses at all, and hunted on, smiling. Barry was impressed.

And that was essentially the end of the weekend except the 12 who came off or whatever it was that happened to them behind us in the run around the corn got lost trying to find their way back to the trailers. We three who had hunted on were back at the trailers and loaded and back at the barn and all cleaned up before they ever got out of wherever they were -- easily two hours behind us. My poor friend Rebecca had been scraped off on a vine and then her horse ran away and wouldn't let her get back on and then when they did get back to the trailer he ran away again, down the road, and then Sara's horse ran off into the woods while Sara was trying to help Rebecca. Etc. Horses never run away from trailers. There's HAY in the trailers! Rebecca and Sara were not very happy with their beasts when they finally got home.

Nevertheless, everyone is hoping to go out again on Wednesday.

Abandon Ship

I spent four days at the farm last week/weekend and the time was marked by an unusual number of "emergency dismounts." This was a bummer as we are all trying to get back in foxhunting shape because opening cubbing is Labor Day Weekend. Out-of-shape riders the first day of hunting are a recipe for disaster.

First, Robbie took his horse Merlin to a jumping lesson off the property and came back with a bleeding horse and a large number of bruises on his Robbie body. What happened? Merlin gashed a hole in his upper leg taking out a pole over a jump. Robbie said it was "pick ups ticks and tinder flying everywhere, the stupid beast." That will teach him to pick his legs up when he jumps. As for Robbie, he managed to come of his horse three times in an hour. He was dazed and dusty and mystified.

Then, Dale and I decided in the middle of the night that the moon was bright enough to warrant a midnight bareback ride around the property. We pulled two horses out of the fields (Burton and Mac) and set off with no saddles, no bridles, and no hats. Excellent idea! We went down in the woods and walked up the river and out into the front hay fields. All was well. Then we decide to canter. Burton was okay with this except he preferred to trot -- there is nothing worse when you're bare back to have the horse do a fast, very bouncy trot instead of a canter. We call it "the tranter." Dale's horse came up next to me and bumped my leg with his fleshy haunches and that was it -- I bounced bounced bounced slowly sideways and ditched on to the hard ground of the hay field (no rain recently). WHACK! Proving why we are supposed to wear helmets. Burton stood there with the two lead lines that were attached to his halter lying on the ground, looking at me with a disappointed face. I trudged over to the nearest jump and got back on and then we cantered the rest of the way home.

Then we were sitting on our bareback horses near the barn relaxing, letting them eat grass, lying back on them with our heads on their haunches, looking at the moon. Dale started laughing about my "tranter" and then she laughed so hard she laughed herself right off her horse and WHACK she was on the ground too. Then I laughed at her -- much better to fall off at the tranter then to fall off at the halt.

So in one day that was five falls by supposedly skilled foxhunters.

Then yesterday, I go on a leisurely ride with Jonathan and Rebecca across the road into the park. Jonathan's horse was being bonkers so we just walked. Just walked. Down a path we have traversed a million times. Up on the steep hill that borders the Patuxent River. Our home territory, practically. I was in the lead and we came to a part of the trail with a stone in the middle and a fallen log on the side. I alert my friends, "There's a thing here, be careful." But I have confidence in my Irish horse so we start to pick our way through. The next thing I know Burton is down on his knees and then down on his side rolling down the hill towards the river. I instinctively step off of him and land on my feet and start pushing on him to keep him from rolling further. Miraculously, he rights himself and struggles back up on the trial. I stand there, part way down the hill looking at him. He stands up there looking at me. This all took about 3 seconds and the only noise was the huge sound of logs cracking under his weight. We all start to laugh. "Burton fell down!" He was completely calm about it. So I lead him a ways down the trail to a big fat rock and get back on. Only then do I realize that my right hand is in incredible pain. Even though I had never hit the ground with anything other than my feet, I had managed to break/fracture/bruise/sprain my hand.

My pinkie and palm had already swollen up so much I had a hard time getting my glove off.

Hopefully we'll all be in better shape once the season actually begins.

Loose Horse(s)

I spent the weekend at the farm. Some of you may recall my youthful friend Robbie. He and I decided to forgo the formal Hunt Club trail ride this morning and just ride leisurely around in the farm early in the morning to beat the heat.

Dale took advantage of this by leaving him and me in charge of bringing in the 6 horses that live in field 7, including my Kona, Sully the baby, the master's horse Agua, and various others. We decide it's too hot to fool around too long bringing horses in so in our wisdom we decide to bring them all in on the gator together. Six horses leading off one gator. "Ever done that many on one trip?" I ask Robbie. "There's a first time for everything," he said. I was responsible for Kona and the baby and an unidentified black horse. (Lots of new horses at the farm so this wasn't too surprising).

We set off in some chaos -- Agua had decided he didn't need to be led so we just let him follow the gator. Sully decided he didn't need to be led either but instead of following he charged off in front of the gator. He didn't get very far though because he kept stepping on his lead line and bringing himself temporarily to a complete stop with a look of shock on his baby horse face. Eventually he picked up speed and held his head high to keep the lead line out of his way and vamoosed off in a puff of smoke into a paddock that had its gate open.

Aha! I jump off the Gator and try to steer Kona and the other black horse after Sully to close him in the paddock. But Kona and the black horse really wanted their breakfast so they tried to drag me the other way. We had a three way tug of war contest with my little human arms as one point of a triangle with two big black horses on the other ends. They would both peered at me intently and then turn their humongous heads away from me and I'd fall flat on my face in the dust. (they're strong) I start to grunt and yell. I wonder where Robbie is. He was supposed to be RIGHT THERE ON THE GATOR. Pulling on the horses with my body at a 45 degree angle to the ground, I eventually inch them over close enough to the paddock to shut Sully in. Sully is running madly in lunatic circles. I figure that it the end of that.

I turn back to the barn just in time to see Agua disappear off into the sunset.... I assume Robbie will handle.

I go put Kona in his stall and I think something about his morning feed looks suspicious to me.

I go put the unidentified horse in the aisle and go into the feed room to look at the board and try to figure out who on earth the horse is.

And I notice on the board that Dale has moved Kona to a new stall which means he's in there happily eating someone else's breakfast. Which is no big deal except it means he's not eating HIS breakfast which means he's not eating the medicine he's supposed to get every morning for his underactive pituitary gland (big horse, no pituitary). THIS IS BAD.

So I race back to the other barn and drag Kona away from his full plate of food and put him where he now belongs with his little breakfast and his medicine.

Then I have to go get Sully out of the paddock that I had locked him in. In the few moments I'd been gone dealing with Kona, Sully had managed to remove his halter and lead line from his head entirely. So I tramped all over the paddock looking for it -- in the 90 degree sun -- as he galloped madly around me in giant circles. Little baby horses look so funny galloping. I eventually found it and he eventually galloped to the gate and because he's so little, I was able to literally put my arms around his little baby back and belly and hold on to him while he panted and sweated from running so much. I put his halter back on and give him a carrot. He's not coordinated enough yet to eat a carrot and walk (much less run) at the same time, so this worked pretty well.

As I'm leading the panting Sully back to his stall for his breakfast, I see Agua amble around the side of the barn, totally unattached to anything still and no Robbie in sight. Agua has apparently been going in and out of all the empty stalls eating everyone else's breakfast. And presumably a nice variety of medicine too. He sauntered out of the barn in a full, satisfied way.

Just then, I see Robbie tearing down the driveway in the Gator -- he had been off catching his own horse so that we could ride, the original plan, after all. He sees Aqua patrolling around and sings out, "Now that's funny! I totally forgot about him!"

So once we put Agua in his stall we turn our attention to the mysterious black horse in the aisle waiting to be identified. "Who's this anyway?" I say to Robbie. We look at the horse. "No idea," Robbie says. "Dale ever say anything about a new dark bay coming to the farm?" "Not to me," he says. "Could be anyone, really." We turn away. We look at the board. We come running back out in the aisle. "IT'S MANNY!" we say in unison. Manny -- the horse Robbie hunted for a year and steeplechased on and won the Founder's Cup on. MANNY! We know Manny! We have pictures up the ying yang of me and Dale and Robbie and Manny at various places! We didn't recognize him because he was so bleached out and skinny from being away in a field for the summer.

So all in all, it's a good thing Dale wasn't there. She would want to know why we decided to bring in all six at once, why we decided to let the master's horse wander freely around, why we chased the baby into a paddock and watched him race wildly, why we fed Kona someone else's breakfast, and why we didn't recognize one of our favorite race horses.

Instead, when she got back, all she had to say to us was, "Who left Agua's halter on?"

The Funny Farm

Saturday was another day on the farm. I had spent Friday night in Apartment B because we had a hunt club trail ride departing from the farm at 9 a.m. on Saturday. I woke at daybreak to the sound of some sort of family of laughing birds in the sycamore tree outside. Magpies? Laughing Starlings? Whatever they were, they were in hysterics over something. Which was an omen.

My first job was to go and get Mallow and Burton from their field which is now very far away and which means I took the Gator to get them (little motorized John Deere thing). Catching two horses is harder than catching one. You catch the first one and then have to drag it around after you while you try to catch the second one. Neither Mallow nor Burton are particularly easy to catch sometimes so they make sport out of the efforts of the human. I was not very coordinated and kept stepping on my own lead lines and getting tangled up and dropping the carrots and falling down and the horses looked at me with pity and thus, allowed themselves to be caught.

Once I caught them I had to drive them both back to the barn in the Gator. This means one horse on either side of the Gator (if all goes as planned) with me driving trying to hold on to two lead lines without running over them, or running into the horses, or running off the road, or getting pulled off the Gator when the horses decide to stop moving. Mallow was happy to trot along beside the Gator but Burton wouldn't move faster than a walk. Which make for jerky and inconsistent progress down the driveway and a lot of yelling. I dropped Burton at one point and had to stop the Gator and park it and go get Burton without dropping Mallow too etc. Very tiring.

Then Mary Anne and Don and Rebecca and everyone else showed up and the trail ride went off and we went across the road into the park and ran around in Goshen's territory jumping all the log jumps they have in their woods and got back to the lodge exactly 1.5 hours later (trail rides are strictly timed due to the heat).

Then I had to put Mallow and Burton back out in their field with the Gator. See points above. I did not drop Burton this time but I did drive over his lead line which was alarming to him and to me and then I leapt out of the Gator to rescue him but forgot to put the parking brake on so it rolled slowly forward and almost hit Mallow so I had to run back to the Gator to stop it from hitting Mallow which fortunately had the benefit of getting the Gator off Burton's lead line. Tiring.

Once I got to their field I had to park the Gator, of course, but I stupidly parked on a slight incline and the parking brake is not strong enough to actually hold the Gator on a hill. But Burton was immediately behind the Gator gazing at me adoringly and Mallow was immediately in front of the Gator gazing at me adoringly so I couldn't drive the Gator up the hill to a flat place or I'd hit Mallow nor could I get out of the Gator to move Mallow because then it would roll backwards into Burton. A dilemma. I ended up encouraging Burton in steps the size of a centipede's to come around the front of the Gator to Mallow without letting the Gator roll into him, without dropping him, without dropping Mallow, and without falling out of the Gator. This took a while. And because horses can't talk, the entire process took place in the bright sunshine in total silence.

Then I ate too much spicy soup at the breakfast and almost blew my head off.

Around 11 a.m. I got a case of the giggles that would end up lasting all day. I began to tell stories and couldn't finish them for giggles. I sat on my stool at the bar in the lodge and laughed so hard my face started to hurt. Everyone else started to laugh too. Mary Anne Ridgely, the Katharine Hepburn of Howard County, looked down her patrician nose at me and announced matter of factly, "Miss Kim, there's something wrong with your head." Yep.

Then Dale says to go ride Arizona. I do not care for Arizona and I do not believe that Arizona cares for me. Arizona did not know how to jump when he came to the farm and Dale forgot to tell me that one day last year and told me to take Arizona around the woods, which I assumed meant jumping jumps. That did not go particularly well. Then Arizona learned how to jump somehow and said to himself, "ah, this is excellent!" and tried to jump out of his paddock and instead lacerated his entire belly so badly things were falling out of it. We thought he was a goner but Roger came and wrapped him up in a big body bandage that went all the way around his entire body and he stood in a stall for six months oozing hideously bad smelling stuff out of his belly onto the straw and then it finally healed and now I have to ride him again.

Arizona is such an unfortunate creature that one day Don (the owner) walked by him and said, "who owns that one?" Jonathan said, "uh, you do." Don rolled his eyes and walked away.
Arizona and I get along so poorly that it makes me laugh. The horse does absolutely nothing that I ask him to and plenty of things I don't ask him to so I just sit up there and wonder what will happen next. I was behind my friend Jonathan and I laughed so hard the whole way around that I was doubled over on the back of Arizona and couldn't really ride and Jonathan started to laugh too and so did Rebecca who was with us and we just laughed and laughed and laughed. My face hurt some more.

Then, Jonathan and I sat around in the sun under an oak tree and laughed for a while and then decided to ride two more horses. He would ride his Belle and I would ride Annie, a plump little mare that needed exercise.

We fish Annie out of her field and she turns out to have a most disgusting suppurating puncture wound on her hind leg so all I can do is walk.

Annie and I walk down to the river and Belle runs circles around us warming up so that Jonathan can school her cross country while I watch aboard the plump, lame Annie. We conclude that perhaps Belle is lame, too. So Jonathan trots her back and forth and back and forth and back and forth in front of me in the woods as we try to decide if she's lame, lazy, or if the ground is just bumpy. The geniuses that we are, we decide to jump her to see if she falls down, which would suggest she might be lame. She jumps like a star. Not lame.

Nevertheless, I suggest to Jonathan that when we get back to the barn he should see if she has a stone in her foot. He decides to leap off Belle and do that right there in that very muddy spot right out there in the woods. He picks up a stick and picks up her hoof. He jabs at her hoof and his stick, which was rotten, disintegrates. He picks up another stick and tries the other hoof.
Belle decides this is boring. And in an instant -- poof! She runs away!. Jonathan and I stare after her as she disappears over the hill, stirrups and reins flapping. "Belle!" Nothing. Sunny silence once again. We start to laugh.

So Jonathan has to trudge all the way back to the barn on his people feet looking for Belle as I waddle behind him on lame Annie. He finds Belle grazing near her field on the other side of the fence from her friend Plum. Belle sees Jonathan and picks up and trots madly back to him. "Hi!" Strange.

The final installment of this doomed ride was Jonathan decides to jump Belle through the in-and-out that traverses the pasture that Plum lives in. Plum runs at a full gallop after him as he and Belle approach the first fence. Jonathan sees her running beside him and tries to stop Belle but Belle was locked on the jump and going so in they go into the pasture and then Plum T-bones them and I thought for sure there'd be a collision or that Belle would object to the interference but no, Belle jumps calmly over the second fence and out of the paddock and Plum looks like she's going to follow but slams on the breaks instead and decides to run the entire fence line to express her outrage -- easily a mile in length. She runs the whole thing, not slowing down for a single moment. Madly. Stupidly. Foolishly running. Belle looks at her in amazement. I sit on Annie laughing. Laughing laughing laughing.

The Belle-Annie ride was such a disaster that really all we could is laugh. We laughed and laughed until our stomachs hurt as well as our faces.

Then we did evening chores and went out to dinner and watched something hysterical called Most Outrageous Home Videos or something on the bar TV at the Olney Bar and Grille and that was the end of us and we just died laughing right there. Dead.

Stuck in the River

We went to the New Market - Middletown Valley hunter paces this weekend and almost got swept away by the Catoctin River or a very large branch thereof. I swear.

The place was beautiful -- Station Road off Route 17 almost on the Washington County border, west of Frederick, Maryland. The parking field is surrounded by an historic stone wall. There are wrought iron benches along the river so that you can look across the river at the horses coming to the finish line and the last 5 jumps or so. It was the prettiest site we've had all season.

Burton and Kona were once again team-mates for the flat course, this being Kona's third hunter pace now so he's an old hand. We mount and ask where the start is. We are told it is down by the river. Indeed -- the starter tells us "your time starts when you hit the water!" We look at the water. It's the Catoctin River itself (or a very large branch thereof) -- full from the recent rainstorms, rushing very fast and very deep across river pebbles. It is very clear water. And as soon as our horses step in it we realize it is also very cold water.

Burton dips his toes in and says, "No -- this is very cold and it's moving too fast and is tickling me. I will do bogs and muddy streams and snow and ice but not rushing mountain rivers that tickle me. No." Kona, who was otherwise quite willing to move into the refreshing current, says "Oh, well maybe I'm not supposed to go over there....?" He takes his cues from Burton and Burton will not move. We are about 10 feet from the starter with lots of teams behind us waiting to go. I kick and kick and kick and kick and kick and Burton goes three feet out into the river, at which point it is already up to his belly. Then he won't move anymore. He has become a Thelwell pony. Kona stands there mildly. Burton drifts downstream a little and smacks broadside into Kona, who has also waded three feet out into the river. Kona bobbles around but still rather mildly. He is taller than Burton so maybe he wasn't so cold or something. I am still kicking Burton but now we are so close to Kona that every time I kick Burton I also kick Kona. Jonathan meanwhile is also kicking Kona which means he is kicking Burton too. The horses drift further downstream packed tightly against each other -- downstream it is even deeper and colder. We are up on top of them flailing and kicking. Huge amounts of water sprays everywhere -- froth and foam and we are up on top screeching and wailing at our beasts. COME ON! COME ON! BURTON! etc. We are now wet through. The opposite bank is getting farther away because we are going downstream instead of across. We look like tiny children just learning to ride. We scream and kick and wail some more, all the while no more than ten feet from the starter. It was like that movie where the guy is lying on his back flailing around in three feet of water thinking he is drowning. SAVE US! OUR HORSES WON'T MOVE! WE'RE STUCK! HELP! HELP! AAAAGHHHHH!

Finally I take Jonathan's whip from him and crack a good one on Burton and he finally went across the river. SUCCESS! We could begin the course!

We were proud of ourselves until we turned around and saw Dale sitting on a horse on the river bank glaring at us.

La la la!

Turns out this mighty river was also the finish line. So when we came back through we ran flat out for the river so that the horses wouldn't have a chance to even thinking about stopping in it. A much better performance.