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.