Sunnyside

Place: Sunnyside Farm, corner of Florence Road and Annapolis Rock Road, Howard County. Less than two miles from Pleasant Prospect.
Owner: Rob Long. Apparently we know him.
Time: 8 a.m. sharp.
Weather: very sunny but chilly, in the 40s somewhere.
Kim's Clothing: Perfect. Long underwear and ski socks fit nicely inside my custom-made tall boots, long underwear provides comfortable layer of extra "padding" while riding, multiple layers of Under Armor, long sleeve dress shirt, wool canary vest, wool stock tie, wool jacket and gloves, very comfy indeed. Also, multiple layers of clothing made it easier to stay upright without using so many muscles.
Burton's Demeanor: Perky, peppy.
Notable Events:

• There was a "stirrup cup" which is a yummy bite of food and a "warming" beverage before the hunt. Once everyone was mounted, a man came around with a silver platter bearing little cups of something that had scotch and sweet and sour mix in it plus tiny little cheese and onion quiches. Not all the horses liked the silver platter; some of them wanted a little quiche too. I thought everything was yummy. I had several quiches.
• Lots of our friends were there so it was very pleasant. It's nice when your friends are there because you can make funny faces at them as you ride along and you can be proud of one another afterwards for not falling off, etc.
• Speaking of that, several people did come off during the hunt, including Dale who came off Giggles while whipping. Some of you may recall that "Giggles has issues." Giggles broke a rein somehow during this mishap and took off for the barns at Pleasant Prospect. A few people went off after Giggles. Giggles got stuck in the corner of a paddock somewhere on someone else's farm and was retrieved.
• Three other people also fell off, making for a total of four involuntary dismounts in one day. That's the most on any day I've ever been out.
• I was not among the people who fell off, nor were any of my friends.
  In addition, we lost about half the field for unknown reasons. Someone came off over a fence and this somehow resulted in the disappearance of 5 members of the field. Once this was discovered, two more members of the field went to look for them. None of those people were ever seen again. Then, mysteriously, a couple more people vanished. Etc. We spent a lot of the rest of the hunt discussing amongst each other what might have become of all these people. This was fine in the end, though, as we had started with an unusually large group, no doubt due to the stirrup cup.
• We saw a hare and several deer. We also saw the fox three times, I'm told, although I was not among those that actually saw the creature. I assume it happened during the several times when we were dealing with involuntary dismounts.
• The fixture was beautiful. There was one large green field on a hill that was so big that you could not see over the hill and it was like galloping in a big green sea under the blue sky. The horses liked it very much. The green field was so big that in one place there were the remains of some extremely large oak trees that had fallen over or been felled and were placed in the field. Each tree was probably several hundred feet long/tall and there were maybe 3 or 4 together. They were as big as a house. But in this enormous green field they looked like small obstacles until you got up close and saw how massive they were. The grass on the field was very green and short -- not tall grass. But it was not a sod farm either because we were allowed to run all over it. I don't know what it was. An enormous lawn? Like a small version of the Salisbury Plain.
• In the woods on the sides of the large green fields the tops of the tulip trees were golden and the under story of shrubs and small trees was also golden and in between the two was nothing but towering gray trunks with blue sky behind.
• There was a pine forest also and I love riding through pine forests because of the pine needles on the floor. With the cold weather and the old fashioned clothes it was like being in Narnia.
• There was also a small sunny meadow on the side of a hill in a crowded wilder part of the forest that only had enough space for the horses and the hounds to stand. It was protected from the wind and was ringed with mature but messy thorny trees but had little immature trees in the meadow itself, most with bright red leaves (maples and some other red-leafed things). We stood in this little sunny meadow (grass here was tall and yellowish) for a while and got warm from the sun as Roger battled with a golden oak tree for some reason we did not fully understand. He had dismounted from his horse to wage this battle, which took some time. After the Battle Between Roger and the Oak Tree, it was revealed that there was a very overgrown jump behind the little oak tree. But, instead of jumping it, the hounds came through the sunny meadow and we all went down into the creek bottoms with the gold leaves and the gray tree trunks.
• After the hunt (about 3 hours later) the land owner fed us chili and bloody mary's and hot chocolate and little tiny chocolate cakes with foxes made out of icing in a big old abandoned tobacco barn. It was lovely. There was hay in the barn so it smelled good and there were big chinks in the walls so you could stand in the barn and eat your fox cake and look at the blue sky and the beautiful turning leaves through the walls of the tobacco barns. People were happy.
• Then it was time to drive all the horses home and get on with the day.

A Horse, A Dog, Some Farm Equipment, and a Very Large Bird

I went and rode my new horse Burton on Sunday. It was an adventure in communicating with non-humans.

Burton lives on an enormous farm about an hour out of town. 50 other horses live there and maybe 3 people, all of whom are professional staff for the hunt club. Don owns the place (he's a joint master), Dale runs the place (she is a whip) and Barry from Ireland lives there somewhere, too (he's also a whip). Going there is like going back in time.

When I got there on Sunday it was warm -- over 70 degrees -- very sunny and very quiet. Not a soul was there. Don, Dale and Barry were somewhere else, I don't know where. The barn was totally empty, only the old yellow lab who lives in the barn and a baby thoroughbred who was being weaned and was in a stall as a result while its mommy was outside. There was a warm breeze. The crops across the road had been harvested so the earth was brown and smelled good. The big hay rolls were rolled up in the fields next door. All the horses except the baby thoroughbred were outside in the sun. The big locust trees stood guard over the stone walls. The sky was blue. There was no noise except the breeze and the very low radio in the feed room of the barn.

To get out to the field where Burton lives I have to drive a piece of farm equipment called the Gator. It is a green John Deere-type implement. I have only recently learned to drive it and I LOVE IT. Driving farm equipment is way more fun than anyone ever told me and I now think everyone must learn to drive farm equipment or else they haven't lived. I recently told a friend of mine who just had a baby girl that she needed to make sure her daughter learned to drive farm equipment or else I would come out to California and teach her myself.

The Gator does not go very fast but it can go over virtually any type of terrain and has a big bay in the back where you can put 8 saddles (we did that once already) or piles of halters or hay or feed or whatever. It makes farm equipment-type noise and you feel invincible rolling along making Gator noise with the wind in your hair, intent on whatever purpose you are about that requires the Gator. I think pretty much everyone loves the Gator. On the occasions when there are other people at the barn with me, people will say things like, "you could take the Gator, you know."

On this day the Gator was parked near the barn with the baby thoroughbred so I took it and sputtered away over the hill, past the locust trees ad the stone walls to Burton's field with the yellow barn dog running along beside me. The sun was on my face and the wind was in my hair and I could smell the cut corn from across the road and the general odor of horse farm. Burton was sun-bathing in his field and came over hoping maybe I had a treat, which I did. We walk back up the hill in his enormous field to where the Gator is parked and all of his paddock-mates come strolling after us. It was little me leading one horse who was leading another horse who was leading two horses over the hill, etc. I extracted Burton from the field without letting all the other horses out too and we settled back into the Gator.

The yellow seat of the Gator was nice and warm by this time so I sat back and smiled and sputtered off with Burton in tow. Burton walks along behind or next to the Gator. He likes the Gator too. Sometimes he likes to get in front of the Gator while I am driving and then I have to stop so I don't run over him (stupid horse). Mostly he trots along beside it. I wonder how long it takes horses to get used to being lead by farm equipment. I suspect Kona would be petrified of the Gator. It took me a few tries to get used to driving with a lead line in my hands. You have to have enough slack to let the horse turn his head or slow down or move off to the side a little or whatever, but not so much slack that you drive over your own lead line. If your horse got upset by something I suppose you could be pulled off the Gator altogether. Burton is fine though -- only sometimes I think he wishes the Gator would go a little faster. The yellow barn dog was still running along beside us. Girl on farm equipment, horse, and dog all running together over the hills in the quiet sun and warm breeze.

We tack up in the quiet barn (still no other souls around) and ride out the back and head up to the ring. The ring is built on the stop of a hill and from it one can see all across Pleasant Prospect and also across several other farms to the north and to the east. It is a surprising vantage point and you don't realize how high up it is until you get there. Howard County is very hilly. On this day with the warm sun and blue sky you could see across lots of woods as well as cut corn fields and the trees were starting to turn so the woods looked yellow, too, in the yellow sun. Still the gentle breeze blew.

Burton and I walk through the tall meadow grass up the hill to the ring and then suddenly Burton won't go any further and won't go up to the gate. He starts to back down the hill in a not very safe manner. The yellow dog is gone. Burton begins to act worried. I finally realize that there is an ENORMOUS bird sitting on the side of the ring. It was so big it looked like it belonged on top of a downtown monument or something. It had its back to us and was looking over the farms to the northeast with its huge wings spread out the way a pelican does, only it wasn't a pelican. It was brown and definitely a bird of prey -- it was as big as a whooping crane only much thicker and really enormously huge. I guess its wings were out warming itself in the sun. It was so big. It was as big as I imagine the real dodo birds were. It was like an emu, sort of. At its large feet was a deer skull, picked totally clean.

So I got off Burton and persuaded him to come into the ring with me on foot (horses are sometimes braver if the little human goes first, even though they are bigger than the little human and the little human can't do much to protect them. They don't realize that or something. This is a known phenomenon, I'm not making it up). I tried waving my little human arms at the enormous bird but all I succeeded in doing was scaring Burton. So I needed a new tactic. I got as far away from Burton as possible without letting go of his reins and then made shooing noises at the huge bird, as if it were a cat. The bird sat there with its wings outstretched still. It's only response was to turn its head and look at us over its wing/shoulder, as if to say, "yes?" It had a very large beak.

Burton stood stock still and stared at the bird. I was on the end of the reins in front of Burton staring at the bird too. The bird was staring at us. The yellow dog came back from wherever it had been and stood and stared at the bird too. We all stood like this for about a minute in the lovely warm sun and gentle breeze. There might as well have been no other people anywhere in Howard County as far as I could tell. I knew for a fact there were no other humans anywhere on the 212 acre property and I couldn't see any humans anywhere on any of the adjoining tracts of land either.

I was the only human left in the world. It was just me and the animals. I wondered what Davey Crocket would do in a situation like this.

We all did nothing and stood in the sun looking at one another for a while. The bird was a beautiful brown color and moved slowly with no apparent fear. The dog sat obediently nearby, ready to heard the emu-dodo type bird, perhaps, if it suddenly decided to start walking around on the ground (unlikely). Burton watched the bird. Burton knew it was not a fox or a hound but that is the extent of his animal taxonomy so he just stood there mystified. The emu-dodo bird looked at us. Sometimes it turned and looked back out over the fields. Then it would look back at us.

Eventually it flew away. With very long, slow swooping flaps, down off the edge of the arena and low over the cut corn in the neighboring farm.

So that was that. Burton and I rode around in the warm sun and then went back through the tall meadow grass and under the waving locust trees past the stone field walls to the quiet barn. The yellow barn dog came in carrying a rack of antlers from the deer skull the enormous emu-dodo bird had been guarding. They were picked clean too. You could see the entire bone structure of the carapace between the two racks of antlers, all interlaced with tiny bone filaments. You could see the bone structure of how the antlers attached to the skull, which was presumably still up where the big bird had left it. The yellow dog presented it to me and Burton. Burton looked at it intently. I took it and put in the truck of my car. I am going to bleach it and put it in my office with the rest of my natural history collection.

Then it was time to drive Burton back out to his field in the Gator with the dog running beside us and give Burton another treat and watch him roll. For the first time Burton did not walk away as soon as we got there. He stood around with me near the gate and sighed and checked to see if I had any more treats and sighed some more and looked at me. I told him he was very brave about the giant bird in retrospect and he looked at me with his brown eyes as if to say he thought so too, in actuality. After a little while of standing around sighing and blinking in the sun, he walked off to join his paddock-mates. This is about as nice a thing a horse can do to a little human in a field, really. Stick around and socialize when its is not, strictly speaking, required.

So I was there for about 3 hours and spoke only to a dog, a baby thoroughbred, several adult horses, a giant bird, and a dead deer. It was lovely.

Annapolis Rock

Saturday's hunt was at Annapolis Rock, which is so beautiful I love it, it is my favorite place. Public property and part of Patuxent State Park. After a very slow and boring hunt on Wednesday at Oakdale, this one was more fun. Highlights include:

• Arrived at farm to find just Dale. No-one else there to help. So, it was me and Dale getting 5 horses cleaned up, tacked up and loaded on the trailer. This was apparently by design but Dale had not thought it necessary to tell me in advance. The 5 horses were her horse for the day (Rory), my horse (Burton), Barry the Whip's horse (Doris aka Giggles), and the Scranton's two horses (Thor (enormous) and Lad (minuscule)).
• I ended up actually loading them all while Dale changed into her hunt clothes. One of the many benefits of Dale's hunt horses is they sure know how to load. Dale's 5-horse trailer requires all 5 horses to back into their stalls once they are up the ramp and in the truck, and these guys pretty much do it on their own. They also will walk up the ramp on their own, generally speaking. But I was still proud of myself for getting them all on and in the rights stalls and then closing and locking up the trailer sufficiently satisfactory that Dale didn't have to correct me on anything (Dale is scary).
• We had a jolly time in the truck on way over talking about sorts of things that horsie women talk about -- I think we will end up getting along just fine. [If I've neglected to mention it, Dale is the barn manager at Pleasant Prospect and also one of the Whips for the club (like Barry), which means she rides out around the hunt field rounding up hounds that have gone astray and trying to get them back to the pack, etc. She carries a very large whip with her and sometimes a gun. She trains foxhunters. She's very no nonsense and sorta scary.]
• Get to fixture early -- we are first ones there. It is pitch black and pouring rain. Torrential. Couldn't hear one another talking. So we sat glumly in truck waiting for either a) the sun to come up, b) the rain to stop, or c) the Scrantons to arrive to take their horses off the trailer. While we were in the truck we signed all the paperwork re acquisition of Burton so at least it wasn't a waste of time. Some other trailers arrived and their drivers sat glumly in their trucks waiting, too.
• The rain let up and then the sun came up (still no Scrantons, Dale was cursing up a storm "they're LATE!" she spat) so Dale and I got out of the truck and went back to unload.
• While we were still in the trailer putting bridles on the horses, Roger comes over to sign some sort of Master of the Hunt paperwork that Dale had for him and that had to do with preservation easements somewhere He observes that it is just me and Dale dealing with the 5 horses. Then he goes away.
• I end up having to get Giggles over to Barry by the hound truck, then help the Scrantons get up (they cannot girth and stirrup themselves, not sure why), then I had to block Dale's horse into a mounting block so she could mount (horse apparently walks off if you don't), and then and only then was it time for me to get on Burton. So I was the last one up.
• Once I was up Roger came over to me and said, "So you're unchaperoned already?!" I thought he either meant I was riding without my usual cadre of friends or was wondering why I wasn't in the back with Carter. I said something like, "what you think I need a chaperone in the field even now that I have Burton?" He just looked at me. Then I said, "You'd be proud of me though -- it was just me and Dale at the farm and we got 5 horses ready and loaded ourselves and were still the first ones here!" He said, "that's what I meant by unchaperoned -- Dale does not let most people help her get ready in the a.m." Oh.
• Then Roger looks at me again and tells me to go introduce myself to the guest he had brought with him and admonishes me that "she is looking for people to ride with so you might invite her on a trail ride or something." I dutifully went off to find said guest, thinking that I had just received my first direct order from the Master in my capacity as an actual member. Guest turned out to be sorta deadly dull and without a horse of her own (was riding Roanoke) so now I'm thinking Roger expects me to invite her to ride Burton on a trail while I twirl around in crazy madness on Kona trying to make him brave enough to walk by a daffodil. Hmm.
• By now it was 7 a.m. so we moved off. I rode with my new friend Julia in the first field who rides a nice 17.3 tall grey thoroughbred/warmblood cross thingy who is very sensible and who has a pace that works well in front of Burton when we are running. We were number 12 and 13 in the field respectively -- there were probably about 40 riders total. It was still raining slightly but only enough to keep us from getting hot.
• Annapolis Rock is, as I said beautiful. I love it. Mostly woods and lots of different kinds of woods and lots of space and nice footing, etc. Pine woods and tamarack woods and oak woods and everything in between. In the woods we did not really get wet from the rain.
• Our biggest adventure was an impressive ditch obstacle. Julia and I see up ahead that something is happening because riders are disappearing momentarily and then re-emerging with much rocking and arm flailing and scrambling noises and strange positioning. I saw what appeared to me to be a dark bay horse going vertically up a hill. I could see his nose and ears and all his neck and his back and the top of the head of the rider and then the horse's tail. It was as if someone had taken a photograph of a horse and rider from an airplane and then hung it vertically on the wall. I thought to myself, "good lord -- something fearsome must be coming. What could it be?" Julia and I peer nervously ahead. It turned out to be a ditch that one approached down a clay-like, slippery incline of about 30 degrees, followed by a cliff-like drop-off of about 1.5 feet, a rocky stream at the bottom for about 4 feet (water burbling in rain), and then a very steep clay-like exit, probably 45 degrees, no cliff, just smooth and slippery. The other side of this ditch was higher than the side we were on. The sensible grey horse Julia was on walked down the incline, stepped off the cliff into the stream, and then pulled himself up the other side with a lot of huffing and gusto. This was what the vertical airplane horse and been doing. Once across the objective was to gallop up the rest of the hill (covered in tamaracks this part) to somewhere (not sure where). Burton observes Julia's horse (must learn its name) and pauses. He appears to be considering whether the gray horse's approach was the most sensible or whether there was a better way. Burton decided the better way was to just jump the entire ditch, bank to bank, without bothering with the 1.5 foot cliff or the stream or the opposite incline. So that's what we did. Which avoided any vertical airplane horse problem and allowed us to be in the air for a quite a nice period of time as the ditch was pretty wide and turned the ditch from a treacherous obstacle into more of an amusement park ride. Then we ran up the hill and I was hooting out "Woo hoo!' which I bet is not proper hunt etiquette.
• Once I catch up to Julia and the rest of the field and stop running I tell Julia how good my horse was since she couldn't see our leap because we were behind her. She said she was not surprised and that I shouldn't ever have any ditch issues with Burton because ditches are his forte (everyone knows Burton, by the way). I said something intelligent like "really?" She said of course Burton was excellent at ditches. "He came from Ireland." I said something intelligent again like, "oh." It turns out that Ireland is riven with ditches from end to end, apparently, and so Irish foxhunters spend their youth cavorting in, out and over ditches. Irish hunt clubs apparently jump ditches alone and in combination with other things (like stone walls, automobiles, hay wagons, etc.) more often than the sort of obstacles we jump (logs, coops, fences). So now I know.
• Later I learned that Burton's ditch performance caused problems for the fellow behind me because his horse (golden palomino draft horse, very fat) thought maybe it could jump the whole thing like Burton did, too -- but either the horses wasn't capable or the rider wasn't capable or both because I am told it did not turn out well for them.
• After that we starting running and jumped very many logs of all different varieties. It was very fun. Some of the logs were close together so we'd run up hills jumping logs every 3 or 4 strides. Some were large and fat and solitary. One was in a bog so we all sank down into the bog on take-off, which had amusing effects on the positions of the rider who had thought he/she was perfectly set for take-off only to find a little less oomph in the horse's hind end than expected and thus a little more contact with the saddle over the obstacle log than desired, if you get my drift.
• Two and a half hours later it was time for me and Dale to get the five muddy and sweaty horses loaded for the trip home. In the truck on the way I told Dale about Burton's ditch and she confirmed his ditch prowess and she told him that she thought it was okay for me to be friends with Julia, "I guess that's okay, I'll allow that!" she said. She said I had to check with her before making any other new friends however, and then proceeded to tell me which hunt members really can't ride, which one's have bad horses, which ones to stay away from under certain conditions, etc. She told me the person on the vertical airplane horse makes EVERYTHING look dramatic and that it is generally best just to look the other way. I told her that Burton was very popular in the field and she said, "so that means you'll be popular, too!" I said, "hooray! finally!" All in all, it was very jolly.
  We decided I must learn to the drive the trailers because some days there as many as three trailers coming from Dale's to the hunt. Also, it seems like a good thing to be able to do in case of emergency, etc. So I will have a trailer driving lesson in the near future, starting with the 2-horse trailer and working up to the 5-horse.
• We go again tomorrow morning, this time from the Kennels.

Oakdale

Amusing and/or interesting items re this mornings ride:

• The scene at Dale's in the morning as quite calm. We loaded two trailers of horses in about 10 minutes (7 horses total). Pretty impressive. Dale has a white board in the barn with that day's hunt horses listed and columns for who's riding them, whether they are in, whether they are clean, whether they are tacked, and whether they are loaded. Only problem was when we arrived at Oakdale two of the horses had managed to literally turn all the way around in their stalls and were facing backwards out of the trailer. ? Dale said we should take a picture and post it as an example of "improper trailering." No clue how they did that, ride was only about .4 minutes long. Dale also said, "well, I guess I'll take these two out the back and not the side." Pretty funny.
• We also arrived at Oakdale without Burton's running martingale. Dale said, "he doesn't really need it, I guess. Although he was in all night and will be peppy." I said, "oh great." Then Dale said that actually I wouldn't need it but that if Crystal were riding Burton they would scurry and find one. She said, "won't be necessary the way you ride." I made some snide insecure comment. She said, "no you dingbat, you don't need it because you ride well!" Turned out I really didn't need it -- Burton was totally fine. Though bored because ride was so slow.
• On hunt, which was mostly walk with only 3 short-ish canters and lots of standing around, we were approached by a herd of deer through some sort of thicket. Roger calls out to staff -- "are they with antlers or without antlers?" It was funny.
• A hound got stuck in a paddock. For a while.
• Ryan was wearing the same stock tie as me -- which, by the way, I tied perfectly.
• Burton tried to pay a social call on the horse in the paddock the hound was stuck in, even though we were trotting by. Bizarre. Don't know what he was thinking.
• At one point I accidentally tossed Burton's reins over his head whilst trying to fix my hair. I felt vaguely like Pattie. Time to buy a hairnet. Fortunately Burton was occupied eating a cornstalk at the time so nothing happened
• Dale admonished me for starting in the back with Adrian. She flailed and smacked at my arm -- "what were you thinking being in the back?!?!" I told her it was all moot anyway since we mainly walked and halted. But next time I guess I will be more in the front. I ended up in the back of the front field, with Carter and Ryan. I was trying to avoid Crystal on her skinny gray thoroughbred. Don't like her.
• Carter taught me some things about hounds. Puppies are the ones with collars. The "H" litter is terrified of horses (that's the one that got stuck in the paddock). A dog that won't move is said to be "smelling and dwelling."
• At the end we had to wait around forever for Dale and Barry to get back because of the aforementioned hound that was STILL stuck in the paddock. Then a hound sat just inside the cornfield staring at Barry and wouldn't come out. Hound sat there staring for a while. Barry crouched 20 feet away making strange noises. Dale eventually had to go get another hound on a leash (i.e., lead line) to fish the scared hound out. Then Barry picked it up and carried it to truck.
• Turns out Barry lives at Pleasant Prospect. Don't tell Petra.
• Dale has an ad in the Equierry for "an aspiring professional foxhunter." Only way you know it's Dale is the phone number. Oh, and the fact that the ad says "thick skin and sense of humor encouraged. Horses must be your #1 priority." (see page 94 of current issue).
  Shipping on hunt days just gets put on my boarder bill. Pretty easy.
• I learned to drive the Gator. Burton has poor Gator manners and trots along side it. I almost fell out of the Gator as a result.
• I talked to Lori in the Gator. She turns out to be okay. She taught me things about how the barn works that I was too afraid to ask Dale so that worked out pretty well. There are very few boarders there. There is one tack room devoted to hunt tack and you don't need to buy your own hunt tack because they have oodles and Dale doesn't care. Then there is another tack room just for boarder tack. The cleaning supplies in the hunt tack room are for communal use which comes with the price that one is actually expected to help clean ALL the day's hunt tack before leaving. So I had to clean 4 bridles and hang up 7 girths. Hanging up the girths would seem easy except they don't have sizes on them anymore so you have to stand there in front of the rack and try to figure out which ones are 52s, which ones are 50s, etc. It took me a long time to do that with seven girths. I felt like I was on Sesame Street.
• The infamous Scrantons are Stephanie and Rob who ride Dale's horses. Dale won't let them meet her at the barn because she doesn't think they're good enough. Dale is scary. Stephanie rides Giggles and Rob rides Thor.

Burton at the Kennels

So I went foxhunting this morning with Burton. The facts are that we had wet conditions and a very large field (50 riders or so) and we got the fox. We hunted for 2.5 hours, we did a lot of running, we jumped several ditches numerous time, one collection of twigs that sprayed up into the air, one small spindly evergreen tree that had fallen over (several times -- it was near the aforementioned ditches), and one large manmade log jump, maybe 2 feet 9 inches high, going uphill. Nobody fell off. No mishaps of which we are aware except my friend Amanda's horse lost both of its left shoes (due to mud).

The story of this hunt is better than that, though. First of all, we went off from the kennels at 7 a.m. The kennels are in Damascus, Maryland, which is where Montgomery County, Frederick County, and Howard County all meet in a point. It is 45 minutes from my house. One has to be there half an hour before setting off to get your horse off the trailer and ready to go before the hounds assemble and start making a racket. So I got there at 6:30. Which means I left my house at 5:30, which means I got up at 5, etc. And this was an easy morning because someone else was grooming my horse and taking him and loading him on the trailer from where he lives to go the kennels in the first place. Soon I won't have that luxury and will have to first drive to barn, prepare animal, load animal, then follow trailer to location for hunting etc. On the upside, as the season progress, start times move back so that by November we're starting off at 11 instead of 7.

The point of this explanation is not to say woe is me I head to get up so early but to explain why when I was driving up 270 this morning it was pitch black. Totally pitch black (it was also raining). In fact, when I got to the kennels at 6:30 it was still pitch black. All the trailers started pulling off the tiny windy road into the kennels with lights on and parked and kept their engines running so that the lights in the stalls would stay on so you could see to put on bridles, etc. The noise and atmosphere was similar a truck stop at night only punctuated with horse-type noises and hounds barking. I am always struck by how the trailers materialize out of nowhere all at the same time and pull off the road in a steady stream.

I began to worry that the sun would not actually rise and we would have to hunt in the dark. I wondered how that would go in the woods. How would we see the jumps? What if the horse in front of me was black? We certainly wouldn't see the fox, etc. But then suddenly at five of 7 the sun rose over the soybean fields and there was light and everybody mounted in a big hurry and we set off.

What followed for the next hour was in retrospect funny but at the time a little annoying. We trot downhill down a paved road (hard on the legs) and then gallop to the right and head madly into the woods. We jump the first ditch, then the twigs sprayed up in the air, then the fallen over evergreen and then come to a sudden stop. We turn around and gallop madly back to the road and continue trotting down it (rather steep at this point). Then we come to a sudden stop. Then we trot up the road the way we had come, turn back into the woods, and gallop madly over the ditch, twigs, evergreen, etc. Another reverse. Gallop over all aforementioned obstacles in reverse order back to the road, canter down the road this time (very noise, hard on the back), sudden stop, reverse back up the hill. Why? we wondered? WHAT IS GOING ON? Every time we reversed the whole field doubled back on itself and one could wave at one's friends farther back in the field as you passed and say "good morning!' and examine animals for lost shoes or wounds or see if anyone had fallen off. But four times in a row of doubling back got annoying.

So we finally galloped out of these woods and into the bean fields and then back down into some other woods and over quite a treacherous ditch and we proceed to repeat that exercise several times -- galloping madly back and forth over the same terrain so that the sides of the ditches got really worn down and squishy and the evergreen got flat from being stepped on by enormous foxhunters, etc. At one point we galloped around two of the four sides of a quite large bean field and we were going so fast I literally could not see very well and there was mud in my face and I had to keep leaning way down to avoid getting hit in the head by trees that lined the field. Was also completely out of breath even though I was not the one actually running. We were going so fast and there were so many of us spread out single file that by the time our master got to the end of the field and went down into the woods, the last person in the field was still just getting off the road and starting off into the beans. I turned around and looked back at us all spread out full tilt at single file at one point and it was really very cool looking. (By the way, bean fields are very pretty this time of year because they are turning yellow and there was fog and a light drizzle and only in the 60s.)

We jumped the manmade log jump, uphill in the woods, with a dazzling display of hunt field etiquette. Everyone went single file, everyone left space in case the horse in front encountered difficulties over the obstacle, everyone approached at an even steady pace, and everyone jumped without incidence with a maximum of stylishness. We were all QUITE PLEASED and did a little cheer for ourselves (Burton stumbled on a soggy wood pulpy thing right at take off but made it over just fine with a lot of cheer and elan.)

The only time I got slightly alarmed was one time galloping down hill. We were going a little too fast, and we were entering a part of the woods with slippery footing and very tight turns and lots of saplings to avoid hitting. I knew that coming up we would have to do a hairpin turn to the right to get back on the trail and I knew we were going too fast to make the turn. So I start to pull Burton up and he was going sufficiently fast that to slow down he had to basically park his hind legs and doing a barrel racing type stop only down hill in the mud, which bounced me up out of the saddle a little bit just at the time that we started weaving through the saplings and heading for the hairpin. So I was up in the air trying not to fall off the front of my horse since we were going downhill and the horse starts weaving and I start weaving the other way (involuntarily) and I end up standing way out in my left stirrup as the horse goes right and I say "Uh-Oh!" pretty loud somehow clamber back on and end up still on to of Burton but without any reins or stirrups and brushing perilously close to little saplings as we continue galloping madly. That was a little scary. My friend Petra in front of me was having similar difficulties as it turned out. But we stayed on.

In general, we did quite an excessive amount of running. We were either standing still or running. Which is "good sport" but very tiring because you basically MUST KEEP GOING and you can't sort of take a rest for 5 minutes or else you will be lost forever in the hinterland. Also, it is very bad form unless you have an injury or some other emergency. It is better to be in the front field than the back field because even though the front field is faster, you get more breaks. If you are in the back field, then you just catch up to the rest of the field and the master runs off again. Burton had a very good time and presumably felt right at home with the drizzle and the wet footing and the fog and mist and the chill. It reminded me of a riding trip I took in Ireland one time where it basically rained for 5 days straight.

When we were all done I learned that riding among us that day was a man who is the joint master of the Golden Vale hounds in Tipperary, Ireland. His name is John Lang. He was very jolly and gay and comes over to say hello to Burton and then the light dawns and I realize that this is the John Lang who actually bred Burton and brought him here from Ireland to begin with. So he tells me all about Burton and it turns out that his farm in Ireland is called Ballycormac Farm and so Burton's official name is Ballycormac Burton. Which I like.

I came home and took a three hour nap under the covers and in my pj's and everything. Next time out is Wednesday morning.....