The End of the Season

Last weekend was the Howard County-Iron Bridge Race Meet, held at our farm (Pleasant Prospect) in the rain and sleet. It was wonderful -- like a 19th century country festival in the mud. We had ten races, a big tent, and the relay race at the end between three of the mid-Maryland hunt clubs (Howard County, Greenspring, Elkridge-Harford).

I was the Clerk of Scales again which meant I got to weigh in all the jockeys to make sure they weighed enough to race in the steeplechase. In our races, they have to be more than a minimum weight, set for each race, and if they are too light they have to sit there and add iron to their saddles until their are heavy enough. So I get to sit there with tiny leprechaun-like Irish jockeys who weigh nothing and watch them pack their saddles up with lead all the while saying to me in Irish "madam Clerk, am I heavy enough yet?" "Nay I say, not heavy enough yet." One jockey, Tom Foley who races flat races at Charleston most of the time, was so far off weight I asked him, "How much do you actually weigh, you know, naked?" He said, "117 pounds but that's just this morning ma'am because I ate breakfast." He put 50 pounds of lead in his tack to make the minimum which was 165 (I actually let him in at only 164 but don't tell anyone).

I sponsor a race (the Waterford) and it was a two horse race this year but believe it or not, it was a photo finish. Amazing! Roger came running over to me with a big bear hug and said, "how much more exciting can you get for a two horse race!" Then there was another photo finish later in the day and then the relay race. Ah, the relay race. Three times around the race course handing off a hunt whip as the baton to a team-mate each time around. Robbie was the lead leg on Beckett -- he came in first and handed off to Amanda Reilly on Godiva but Beckett didn't realize he was done and went half way around the race course again side by side with Godiva until Robbie managed to pull him off. I have never seen Robbie have to pull back on a horse so hard -- Robbie is not a weakling. Amanda somehow managed to lose ground and handed off to Jonathan with the team in second place. Jonathan cruised gently around the course, 10 strides off the lead. We thought it was over -- that Greenspring would win. People started to walk away. And then, he came down over the causeway from Waterford and around the last barrel and OUT OF NOWHERE blew past the leader (who was already standing up in his stirrups thinking he was done) and Jonathan won the whole dang thing for HOWARD COUNTY! HOORAY! Nobody could believe it. Mayhem ensued. Screaming and jumping up and down and Roger running around everywhere hugging everyone and Marianne Ridgely (Madam Maryland Racing) practically beside herself. Jonathan later claimed that he was coming down the causeway and Robbie (who had only recently managed to get back near the start with Beckett the Horse Who Wouldn't Stop) was in the infield and said, in a voice as if from God, "Jonathan! Go to the Whip! Go to the Whip!" And that was that. And it was Jonathan's first race. Thrilling. Don and Dale and Jonathan and I sat in the lodge at the farm all night rejoicing and got sufficiently carried away with ourselves that we ended up agreeing to syndicate a race horse so now I guess I technically have three horses. Hmm.

Then today was our last day of hunting for the season. So sad. It was a small little group and we met two hours earlier than usual so that people could make it up to the Greenspring Hunt Races that were also today. It was chilly so we had good sport. Roger decided that his field had become sufficiently competent that he took us over two large jumps that we didn't even know were in our territory -- a brand new three foot or more railroad tie jump (made out of railroad ties, one on top of another, very solid, generally speaking scary) through a fenced in field and out over a coop at the top. Everybody managed. I got popped out of my tack by Mr. Burton over both jumps which was a little unexpected. One of us jumped a bigger jump than the other one did but I'm not sure who did what exactly. I was airborne over my steed for a few seconds but landed in the saddle at almost the same time that Burton landed on the ground, but not quite. My friend Rebecca behind me said, "hmm, I saw air." I kind of hurt my face because my face made contact with Burton's neck before the rest of me landed. Then we viewed the ragged brown fox across the soy bean field, we ran fiercely down a hill, and then called it quits until September. Yummy fried chicken in the clubhouse.

But we are not too sad because April is hunter pace month and tomorrow we are off to the Potomac Hunter Paces which is held at the Potomac kennels. There are two exciting things about this -- the first is that Jonathan is taking Kona which is a miracle because Kona, as some of you may recall, is terrified of nature. Kona's winter vacation ended a few weeks ago and now he is in full-time Pleasant Prospect school which is just such a wonderful thing because Dale can make any horse into a perfect beast and someone else does all the hard work and I just get back on him when he graduates. Dale plans to take Kona on the entire hunter pace circuit and seems to think he might even be jumping the low course by the end. I'm somewhat stunned that she thinks all this will actually happen. So I'm very excited because both my horses will be on the trailer tomorrow which is something I never thought would happen.

The second exciting thing is that the most impressive lady in our club (in my humble opinion), Marianne Ridgely, who is the grand dame of Maryland racing and sort of the Katharine Hepburn of Howard County, is going to be my team-mate over the high course. She is taking her spotted horse Scout and she asked me to be her lead over everything which is shocking honor (she respects Burton). Last season I was scared to death to ride anywhere near Marianne in the field because she's so perfect and has been hunting all her life, etc. She has beautiful gray hair and is skinny as a rail and long long legs and looks fabulous on pretty much any horse. She is always the first person behind the master. She raced at Foxhall a few weeks ago on her horse Wilson and jumped a 4.5 foot fence. That's higher than an Olympic level fence. It's very high. She came over to me at the clubhouse after hunting and said, "I would be delighted to be your team-mate! Come get some food and sit down with me over here and let's talk about the hunter paces! What fun we will have!"

So it's another early morning tomorrow but I'm sure it will be fun.

And the final bit of news is that due to all this activity in Howard County these days and the fact that I spend most of my time out there, Don is renting me the apartment in the lodge at the farm to be a weekend spot and hunt box during the season. Which will cut about 3 hours of driving time out each weekend and will improve my social life dramatically.

Recall that Carol cannot steer her horse. Recall also that she did not hunt on Saturday and apparently has not hunted since that slow day at the kennels when she annoyed us.

So she fails to steer her horse and it decides to go through two trees between which it really cannot fit. Carol is unable to avoid her predicament because, as mentioned, she cannot steer. Her fat horse scrapes her off between the two trees (on purpose perhaps?) and she ends up, in a most unsightly manner, essentially sitting on its kidneys. The horse then panics mildly there between the two trees and drops down and then gets back up again and so Carol bounced around on its kidneys for a stride. At which point the horse says hell no and flings her up in the sky like a rag doll getting shot out of a cannon.

Carol flies through the air totally limp, not a self-preservation instinct anywhere in sight, goes way up as if bounced off a trampoline and then plummets to the ground in a heap.

She did not move a single limb or anything for a good three minutes. When we got to her she was totally still and moaning softly.

Then a ridiculous number of people had to stay and help her (I'm not sure why) which left just me, Jonathan, Cheralynn and Don to hunt on. And then Cherlynn had to quit because Barney was too slow so it was just me, Don and Jonathan.

Eventually the others rejoined.

Robbie told us later that she was totally loopy the whole way back to safety. Like kept asking what happened etc.

We hadn't even been out half an hour when it happened.

Foxhunting at Wye Island

Four of us from Howard County-Iron Bridge journeyed across the Bay Bridge with the big rig today to go hunting on Wye Island. This was part of our Mid-Maryland Centennial Celebration. Recall this is the celebration of 100 years of something or other and no-one has ever told me what (there's been foxhunting in Maryland a lot longer than 100 years). Anyway, "the Centennial" whatever it is has been a great opportunity to hunt around all sorts of other places in Maryland, besides Howard County, and meet most of the foxhunters in the State. We have all enjoyed "the Centennial" so much this year we are planning to do it again next year!

As you can imagine, hunting the Wye Mills Plantation on Wye Island is very historic and also very beautiful considering it is the Eastern Shore and a State Park and all. This is where the Wye Oak (biggest oak tree in Maryland) used to live before it blew down in a storm a few years ago. George Washington did something here, and also the Duke of Norfolk who's ancestral home was Arundel Castle and I think Mark Twain went foxhunting with Wicomico, etc. Then there was that failed Middle East peace conference at Wye Mills. You get the idea. Today is was beautiful and sunny and warm. Which, by the way, is terrible foxhunting weather (no scent).

Some foxhunting items of note:

• The fearless leader of our barn, Dale, is on vacation in the Caribbean so we had no adult supervision. It was just me, Robbie, Crystal (secretary of our club) and Julia (all around nice person). For those of you who know these animals, we took Burton (me), Manny (Robbie), Becket (Crystal) and Wolfie (Julia). For those of you who know Robbie, he's the one who takes credit for teaching me to drive a two-horse trailer and who has driven me to screech out in the truck, "Serenity now!" (he's chatty in a mid-Maryland kind of way).
• The day started well with me pouring coffee all over my canary vest, getting boot polish on my knee, and getting my hair (which had expanded extraordinarily in the rainy dawn) stuck in a haynet on the trailer. Also, Burton fell off the trailer when we put him on at first and then understandably wasn't so interested in getting back on again. And then we tried to put Becket in a stall on the trailer that also had the mounting block in it. "Becket! Move Back Becket! Stupid Horse! MOVE! Oh. Sorry."
• We had to drive the big rig over the Bay Bridge. Robbie was driving, being the only boy and the youngest by easily 10 years. Also, the only one of us four who is actually checked out on the big rig by Dale. We old ladies were not very interested in the ride over the bridge. In fact, before we left the farm we had all stood around the back of the Dooley looking at the mechanism that locks the big rig onto the truck and wondering out loud whether it would stay on for the two hour drive. "Robbie, should we put the chains on just in case the lock comes loose?" "No." "Why not?" "I tell you what, Kim, if that thing comes loose on top of the bridge there's nothing I can do. And I also tell you what, no chain is going to hold that thing onto the Dooley. In fact, I tell you what, all we'd do is drag the Dooley over the bridge with the trailer. Dang." That made us all feel better.
• We set off to the East. I sang songs in the truck to keep people entertained. We sang "Oh my darling Clementine" because the "fell into the foaming brine" part seemed apt. We sang "I Can See Clearly Now, the Rain Is Gone," once the rain had finally gone. We sang the Mission Impossible theme song as we approached the bridge. We talked about the Iowa caucuses (Robbie did not participate). Then we were at the bridge.
• As most of you know, the bridge is only two lanes going east. We get on the bridge and everything seems fine and then Crystal starts talking to Robbie and Robbie turns to look at her to respond and Julia and I yell in unison "Keep your eyes on the road!" Not like we had been staring at the driver or the road or anything. This emboldened Robbie to then pretend to take his hands off the wheel, look around, point out scenic vistas down the bay, etc. Then he pointed out that Burton was looking out the window of the trailer at the water far below. We wondered what would happen if he tried to jump out of his stall (it's possible, the ties are breakaway in case of an accident). All this did not sit well with us girls. So we decided to look at other things in the truck instead of out the windows -- our blackberries, a magazine, Julia scrubbed madly at mud spots on coats, etc. We made it over safely.
• Wye Island is, obviously, flat as a pancake. Our horses were taken aback. This is not real exercise to them, running on flat ground. Our territory is hilly and rough so at "flatland" fixtures our horses don't even break a sweat (and visitors to our territory typically wipe out within an hour). Not only that, Wicomico and Marlborough hunt hounds that are slower than ours (Penn Marydels as opposed to American Foxhounds, for those of you who care). So even when we did run, which was not often due to poor scenting, it was very slow by our standards. Robbie, Crystal, Julia and I were all up front behind the masters because we had won the "drove farthest" award, and we had a hard time keeping our fit, fast horses in their proper place . Manny is a steeplechase racer, Becket is off the track, Burton is a 7/8th Irish thoroughbred, Wolfie is enormous.
• Our horses compensated by a) flinging themselves over every tiny obstacle that presented itself -- stands of beach grass, cornstalks, little ditches, banks to roads, etc. and b) playing bumper cars with each other. Robbie thought it was entertaining to run up next to me and Burton and sideswip us. Burton is not exactly the friendliest horse so he would react by turning to Wolfie who was next to us and biting him, a move logical only to a horse. Wolfie is a bit of a dumbo so he would look at us and say, "hey...wha?" and then a long time later due to Wolfie's generally slow reactions, he would bite Burton back. Burton would fling his head in an affronted manner. Meanwhile, Manny and Robbie are still gleefully bashing into us from the outside. Maybe we humans were a little under stimulated too.
• At one point we passed a very large holly tree. It was so large I turned to Julia and said, "I bet that is the biggest holly tree in Maryland. In fact, I bet it's the Wye Holly Tree!" And then, yay verily verily, moments later we pass a sign pointing back to the "Wye Holly Tree Trail." How 'bout that. Next time we're there I'm going to look for the Wye Bonsai Tree.
• We sang in the hunt field as well. I'm trying to bring more singing to foxhunting cuz I'm sick of hearing the "hey horse, why the long face?" joke. Burton's selection was "Walk like a man, talk like a man." Manny's was "mission impossible" again because he was REALLY trying hard to stay behind the masters. We all sang "where did he where did he go? My lovelies!" to inspire the hounds. We all did the "See my vest!" version of the Beauty and the Beast song (see my vest! see my vest! made from real, gorilla chest!) [full lyrics below] because that's what naturally comes to mind when you don your canary vest. Someone did the oompa loompa song. Julia remarked that I had a song for every occasion. I told her that was true. It is my Soundtrack for Living.
• The most amusing moment was we were running across a cornfield and we came to a little wash that ran down to the Wye River and had tall beach grass on the sides. The masters in front of us went through the grass but Burton was a little bored by the slow pace so he jumped over the beach grass -- which was pretty high, way higher than we normally jump. I was unprepared, shall we say. Robbie started to laugh but then Manny did exactly the same thing and so Robbie stopped laughing.
• Another funny moment was we emerged from a wooded area and went running to the left, right past a sign that said "All Horses Stay to the Right."
• We hunted for four hours and then put the horses back on the trailer in their sweat suits and had a fabulous breakfast in a cabin besides the river and watched the sun go down on the bay and then headed back to the bridge. It was dark by this time so we figured the drive over the bridge would be less alarming. And also, going west the bridge is three lanes so we figured we'd be in the middle lane. But no. Robbie refuses to get in the middle lane, on purpose I'm sure, and keeps to the far left lane -- the fast lane -- while we girls huddled in the back and cleaned mud off things and looked at phones and blackberries again. We keep looking quickly out to see if it's clear to get into the middle lane. "Robbie, I think it's clear now if you want to get in the middle lane." "Dang, I tell you what Kim, I'm not sure I want to be wiggling this thing around up here in the dark. I think I'll stay right where I am." Sigh.
  We sang all the way home as well. "One Night in Bangkok," that Tribe Called Quest song about "strictly collard greens and the occasional steak, goes on my plate!" That Cake song about the girl in the long jacket. "Electric Avenue." Etc. Crystal's contribution was "mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."
  

Later we found out that the dratted fox had been running back and forth along the beach the whole day, just beyond the tree line, out of sight of the horses and humans and out of reach of the hounds. The fox is probably out on his power boat in the Bay now, laughing.

Kim



See My Vest

Some men hunt for sport,
Others hunt for food,
The only thing I'm hunting for,
Is an outfit that looks good...

See my vest, see my vest,
Made from real gorilla chest,
Feel this sweater, there's no better,
Than authentic Irish setter.

See this hat, 'twas my cat,
My evening wear - vampire bat,
These white slippers are albino
African endangered rhino.

Grizzly bear underwear,
Turtles' necks, I've got my share,
Beret of poodle, on my noodle
It shall rest,

Try my red robin suit,
It comes one breast or two,
See my vest, see my vest,
See my vest.

Like my loafers? Former gophers -
It was that or skin my chauffeurs,
But a greyhound fur tuxedo
Would be best,

So let's prepare these dogs,

Mrs. Potts: Kill two for matching clogs,

Burns: See my vest, see my vest,
Oh please, won't you see my vest.

Hunting Weather

We went hunting yesterday. It was raining and cold. Only about 10 of us made it out, 6 of whom were from my barn. Most of those hunting were staff. It was muddy. Very muddy. Burton and Giggles and two other horse were wearing "mud tails," a very attractive way of tying up a horse's tail to keep it out of the mud. It made them look like horses out of an old English print. It accentuates the haunches.

It was a very strange day of hunting. We were at Annapolis Rock which is famed for its ditches. Within the first four minutes somebody fell off. Then the hounds hit and we ran clear over to Sunnyside -- a totally different fixture several miles away. We jumped a large-ish coop and promptly sat in the drizzling, dank, cedar woods for a while. Our hounds had "split," which means there were now two small packs instead of one pack. We could hear hounds everywhere around us. This makes things difficult for the staff and the huntsman -- if one group hits and runs, they have to hunt the fox but also round up the other pack, wherever it is, and try to get them all back together. One of the two little packs seemed to be cruising the back of a subdivision, tearing up people's yards. The other part of the pack seemed to be stuff in a large thicket, several acres big.

For the next several hours we picked through the sides of hills in the drizzle. No trail. Total bushwacking. Very mushy. At one point I said to my friend Rebecca that I felt like I was in a Ken Burns document. She said she felt as if she was returning from the Civil War. Our friend Garland said he thought he might be part of Moseby's rebellion. At several points we got stuck and Roger our master had us scaling slopes through thickets into the backs of people's yards. Imagine how we must have looked to them.

Then we heard the hounds running and careened back to the road. We were hemmed in by a guard rail where the road went over a bridge. Roger heads straight down the river to the bridge and tried to ride his horse under the bridge in the sluiceway, in the rain. We all hesitated, unwilling for once to follow our master. Our horses were parked at various angles on the side of the hill, all of us peering down at him as he picked his way in his red coat down the rocky river. And then he got stuck -- the water was too high and the bridge was too low.

I was willing to just jump the guard rail and get on the road and run. We eventually reversed back up the muddy hill.

The other major part of the day was our numerous river crossings. The banks were so soft that as soon as one horse went across the bank gave way entirely, so the next horse had to find another way. At each crossing (there were many) we all basically fanned out to fend for ourselves across. Burton, being Irish, was non-plussed and generally jumped down and in and then jumped out with minimum of fuss, his mud tail bobbing in the air behind him. My friend Mary Ann was doing the same thing on her horse Scout, how I learned speaks English. "Jump, Scout.". And he would.

One of our members was unlucky on a clumsy horse and ended up completely underwater in the cold. Another horse fell clear through the mud up to his bobbing mud tail.

At one point, oddly, we were picking through the woods and came upon our huntsman, of all people. He was off his horse, who was standing stock still, on his people feet, completely entwined in a vine. He could not moves his limbs, it appeared. We could just barely make him out through the under growth. Meanwhile the hounds are running and we can hear them rolling but there is our hunstman immobile in a vine. Roger got off and extricated him, and we were off.

Towards the very end of the day we view the dastardly hunted fox, cruising through a horse paddock behind a house. Carter runs down to the woods -- "tally ho behind the house!". Our hounds were down in the deep bottom, running straight up the river to a steep hill, in pursuit. We sat in the field high on the hill and heard them coming. For a long while. They were a ways back and the fox was on ahead. Then they pour out of the woods all around us, eventually running around the horse paddock (the horses within were a bit put off) and we sit them hit the scent and take off as one, finally reunited pack, through the fog and drizzle and low cloud cover, over the harvested fields, and away. And we followed, of course.

A good, although bizarre, day.

New Market Hounds

For two weeks the four foxhunting clubs in central Maryland (Howard County-Iron Bridge, Potomac, Goshen and New Market-Middletown) have been engaged in celebrating a 100 years of something -- I'm not quite sure what. It's not hunting in Maryland because that goes back to pre-revolutionary day, but anyway, 100 years of something very good.

This means we've had four hunts where all four club are hunting together which makes for a merry mob scene and lots of socializing but also means we've been traveling around to each other's fixtures. The territory in each of the four clubs is rather different, interestingly, so it's been very educational.

Yesterday we hunted on New Market-Middletown territory up in Frederick County west of Sugarloaf Mountain. It was the grounds of the Maryland Horse Trials training facility. Dale had told me the day before it was a flat fixture but I began to doubt her as we drove along beside the Mountain. Then we got to the turnoff and we had to go down into a deep ravine with the trailers and back up a switchback road at 2 miles an hour up to the top where we found a mighty plateau stretching away to the West. I said to my traveling companion, "flat? In fact, it is RATHER HILLY." Then once we parked, all we could see were these enormous Olympic size cross country jumps set about this huge field high on the mighty plateau. We became nervous. Burton eyed the obstacles with interest. Then it started to rain. Boo.

Because there are four hunts, that means four masters and four hunstmen and four sets of whips and four fields (only one pack of hounds, though). Huge numbers of people and horses. We milled about the mighty plateau in the drizzle as if were Washington's army massing for a charge. The other hunts have more men than we do so there were many red coats. Then we set off galloping madly across the plateau towards the woods down in the bottom. We were so many of us that we fanned out across the fields in a wide swath, maybe 10 riders wide, and we all thundered along for many minutes because the field is so large. The drizzle smacked us, the mud flew up at us. All one could see was the rumps of the horses ahead of and the sea of red coats up front (I was pretty close to the front) and the flashing of boron shoes in the dim light. It was wonderful! It was like a cavalry -- a cavalcade! The horses were exhilarated! We looked behind and saw the field covered with hundreds of horses and riders swarming after us, followed by pickup trucks with hangers on and photographers. We raced and raced and raced down. We were in a flat out gallop. We all started to giggle as we cruised along at high speed, I sang out, jokingly, "I forgot my girth!" People chuckled. My friend George who rides a giant dappled Clydesdale thing named Charlie who is really not very fast and fairly shakes the earth has he travel is trying to get him to move on by telling him "whoa lightning!" This makes everyone collapse in laughter which is dangerous when galloping. We gallop madly on in this manner, getting dirtier and warmer and wetter, for about 15 minutes at which point we jump a small obstacle into the woods and stop. Steam rises from the horses. The people all look at each other brightly and say some variation of "awake now?!"

And that is basically what the next 3 hours was. Madcap galloping around 2,000 acres of privately held land in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain in the drizzle. There were maybe half a dozen of these huge enormous fields -- some were plateaus, some were shallow basins, some were pitched down towards a body of water, some were pitched off toward the mountain. The fields were separated by little streams with silver maples all around. One of the fields had cows in it -- the cows lumbered after us in their creepy cow way but couldn't keep up. Burton looked down his horsie nose at them.

The fields were so big that we had an unobstructed view of the entire hunt at work, which we can never see in our own territory because we are very hilly and wooded. Burton and I were running down one hill at one point and saw before us the pack, the huntsman, the first whipper-in, the whips that park at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, and the master with us the field, all spread out below. It was like an 18th Century English hunting print. At another point were at the top of a field and the hounds were working at the bottom of the field just at the edge of the woods, and the woods spread up all the way to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in an uninterrupted sea of red oaks and sugar maples and silver maples. No human habitation in sight.

The most humorous moment of the day was when our friend Rob Long fell off at the halt while we were checked. He was trying to retrieve a flask from our other friend Robbie, we believe, and something went horribly awry. His fall at the halt was preceded by comical "whoa! whoa! whoa! noises like a Looney Tunes cartoon. We all clapped. The second most humorous moment was when a man on a wound up rocking horse looking steed went cavorting by and I said, "demonstrating the capriole?" and he said, "oh, is that was this is called?" The capriole is one of those foolish movements the Lipizzaner horses perform. When non-Lipizzaner perform it, it is usually an accident.

Another funny moment was when we came up around the back of one of the fields and had to scale a mountain covered in cedar trees after running speedily through what seemed to be a bog. As we were scaling the mountain (tiny stony trail with sheer cliff to the right) my friend Susan and I say to each other, "yes, a flat fixture, Dale." Tee hee. She later claimed she thinking of some other place.

Afterwards we had a fabulous brunch of fresh oysters and fried oysters and apple pie and scalloped potatoes and some succulent meat dish and green beans and cheese. Then we drove back down the ravine and the switch back road and went around the Mountain and back to Howard County where the horses got bubble baths and then dinner and then were tucked off into their now dark fields in their pajamas

The clubs had so much fun hunting together that we decided to do it again next year, even without the celebration of 100 years of whatever it was we were celebrating..

Kona's Education

Kona is doing very well at Pleasant Prospect. He's been there two weeks now and is already looking healthier and fitter and he's getting used to trail riding.

Every day is a trail riding day at Pleasant Prospect so part of the thought process is that if ever a horse is going to get good at crossing water and dealing with ditches and going through mud and sliding down hills and galloping up hills and jumping downfall and dealing with herds of cows and deer popping out everywhere and packs of docs and paddock after paddock of grazing fellow horses who want to chat and waving fields of hay and tall fields of corn and steeplechase jumps and water fountains and stone walls, etc., it is at Pleasant Prospect. No wonder they are all such good foxhunters.

Kona is not afraid of anything, as it turns out. But that does not mean he necessarily is interested in "letting nature touch him." So we are engaged in an educational process in which he is learning that it is futile to protest and that our destination is to be decided by the rider, not by him. He is quite mannerly when following behind another horse. It is a different matter when he is in front, or alone. Some notable highlights:
Kona went out with a group of three other horses and four dogs the other day. He was being ridden by Jennifer -- one of the people who breaks foxhunters. I was on Giggles bringing up the rear. Dale was on Manny and another girl was on a horse called Dancer who is learning to travel in groups. The four dogs were quite lunatic -- leaping in and out of the river along side us, running at the horses feet, etc. Manny had a small fit -- Kona didn't budge. Dancer stepped on bulldog and we thought may have broken his foot based on the wailing and screeching that arose from the little dog. Kona looked at the dog in disgust. Turned out the dog was fine. Eventually the dogs got tired and followed along right behind Giggles and me panting in a pack and oddly, the noise of the panting was quite deafening to me. I couldn't hear a blessed thing other than the dogs. Kona passed the "dog test."
There is a a place Kona does not like to enter the woods. You have to go down a little hill and around a jump (or jump it) to get onto the muddy track. There are large plants and ferns and things that look like pitcher plants everywhere and some trees. Kona does not like this spot -- I do not know why. So Jennifer tries to make him go and he plants his feet and whirls around and acts like a jerk and runs sideways and curls his neck up and goes backwards and pouts. Jennifer says, "uh, no." And after some fuss and fighting Kona moves very quickly down the hill and past the jump in a very agitated and engaged way. Jennifer comes back and makes him do it three more times. Less fighting each time. Eventually, no fighting. This is why Jennifer was riding him. Success!
Then Kona and I went out a few days later with my friend Amanda who was on Burton. This is when Kona began to realize that resistance is futile and he went first through any of number of stream crossings and mud holes and ditch crossings. Burton plodded patiently along behind. A few times Kona decided he'd rather not go and we had a brief scuffle and I won every time. Yay! At one point he slid down a ditch and bumped his large hindquarters on the side of the ditch on the way down which knocked him off a balance a little so we went careening through some undergrowth and emerged victorious on the other side. He was nonplussed by it all. Just had a few twigs in his hair.
Then we went to cross one of the many streams we must cross to get home and just as we were stepping into it a frog jumped off a rock and said "ribbit!" and hit the water with a big splash. Kona went into reverse gear and poor Burton only just got out of the way in time. On our next attempt Kona decided to jump the stream starting as far away as possible and jumping as high in the air as he could. We flew through the air. I felt like I was on a carousel horse -- whee!!!! It was hilarious. I guess frogs are scary. Burton is behind saying, "do I have to do that too? Looks like an awful lot of energy." He decided to just walk through the stream.
So, everyday is an adventure. Next steps are to see what Kona does cantering through the woods (I may try that today....) and cantering in the fields (don't plan to try that anytime soon). Then we will jump small logs, etc., all the while striving to remain mannerly.

And the best part is that now I have two horses that can go out in the trails! Burton is safe enough to be a guest horse, provided the guest does not become alarmed at Kona's occasional antics. I bet by the end of the summer Kona will be perfect at the farm! And I bet he's hunting by the end of the season (we'll have Jennifer take him out the first few times....!).

A Day in the Park

I had a wonderful ride on my new horse Burton yesterday.

It was a very beautiful day to begin with and Burton and I set out across Jennings Chapel Road into the Patuxent State Park all by our lonesomes. It was around 4 pm. Burton had a couple weeks off because he got a little skinny and was pooped after hunting all season. So yesterday he was feeling good.

The park was unbelievably beautiful. For those of you who do not know it, it is a very large park that follows the whole length of the border of Howard and Montgomery counties and then continues on through Prince George's and Calvert counties to the Chesapeake. It is huge. Up near us the Patuxent River itself is not more than 50 feet wide. When it empties into the Chesapeake it is huge like the Potomac. The Patuxent has grown on me. A lot of our hunting territory is around it and we spend quite a lot of time leaping in and out of it after the fox. Some of you may recall the alleged four foot drop Burton and I jumped in a yee-haw fashion after Robbie the day he whipped -- that was into the Patuxent.

The Patuxent travels along between banks that are very well defined and rather overgrown. Sometimes it reminds me of an English river, the Cam or perhaps the Avon when it runs past Salisbury. Sometimes it reminds me of Plum Creek in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book On the Banks of Plum Creek.

The water is clear and about 3 feet deep at its deepest and moves quickly along over pebbles and large flat rocks and fallen logs. Above the banks is a lovely grassy flat area that runs about 50 yards back on each side and then the land starts to rise up steeply. We sometimes run up and down the hills -- at the top of the hills are the huge farms that make up a lot of our hunting territory -- Harwood (where opening day is), Sunnyside (Rob Long's place), Tranquility, and Pleasant Prospect.
Roger, our master, sometimes refers to the land down by the river banks as "the deep bottom." One major access point into the park is Annapolis Rock (my favorite fixture!) -- if you keep going all the way to Damascus you end up below our kennels.

Yesterday the flat area down in the deep bottom was beautiful -- the grass is starting to grow up, the skunk cabbages are in, the fiddlehead ferns are unrolling, and wild wood daisies and violets and buttercups are everywhere. The swamp roses are leaning out over the muddy trails and the willows and oaks and sycamores have leaves -- although the leaves have not turned dark green yet. The park is strewn with evergreens as well -- cedars, fir trees, pine trees. It is so varied -- one will go through a pine forest and then a meadow with scrub and then a flood plain of birch trees and then an old oak grove. This is the park I have sometimes said resembles Narnia. Yesterday it also resembled the Elf forest in Middle Earth -- accessed from the Shire.

Burton and I cruised along one of the trails that skirts the edge of the deep bottom near the hill that runs up to Tranquility. The trail runs over some lovely jumping logs, up and down the lower part of the hillside over flat rocks and through cedar trees and willows and lots of daisies and buttercups. It was perfectly quiet down there protected from the wind. We were alone -- just him and me deciding together where to go and at what pace. At one point we crossed the deep bottom to go into the beautiful river so that Burton could have a drink of water and blow bubbles (he likes to blow bubbles). We stood in the water with the sun bright on the ripples and the beautiful pebbles and the green grass and looked around. We heard birds. We saw dogwoods and wild spirea and lots of other white woodland flowers that I will have to look up in my Maryland plant book. Everything was green and white except for the wild violets on the deep bottom, which were beautiful.

After cooling in the creek, we tried to find a way out on the other side but failed -- we lept up the bank but 20 yards later were met with an impenetrable wall of evergreens and scrub, so we went back the way we came.

We moved along up towards Sunnyside and went through an area with logs set close enough together to make a sort of five jump combination element with a slight turn in the middle. Soft muddy footing -- dappled light from the trees. SO FUN! We went through ditches -- Burton's forte -- and practiced turning on a dime for no reason other than it was way fun. I was riding Burton in a bit much lighter than the one I usually hunt him in and oddly, he was a lot more responsive (although that might have been because we were alone).

We ended up behind Harwood in a beautiful overgrown narrow lane running up a hill with cedar trees on either side and I was arrested by an amazing smell. I slowed Burton up and we looked around for the source of the amazing smell.

I realized we were in a lane on a softly inclining hill that was covered with honeysuckle that was blooming. I don't think I've ever been in the middle of so much honeysuckle. We stood in the lane about half way up the incline and looked at all the white honeysuckle, which was growing under shorter cedar trees so the blue sky was right above us. I could not see the top of the hill - it went on and on. The footing was cedar tree needles (or whatever you call them). We stood there for a while. Burton ate some grass and skunk cabbage and honeysuckle. I thought to myself that next time I should bring a halter and a sandwich and a book and Burton and I could spend a goodly amount of the afternoon on Honeysuckle Hill. I looked around and saw numerous trails shooting off the lane into the cedars and honeysuckles. It was like a secret garden within the park. I assume we must have hunted very near here before but without the honeysuckle -- it was a place transformed.

I had the feeling of being very far away from everything normal -- almost a time warp. I don't think I had ever been right where I was before yet I knew pretty much exactly where we were. I was alone yet with a living companion (Burton) who could not really speak per se but with whom I was communicating. I knew I was in the 21st century -- I had my blackberry and cell phone in my pocket, Burton was wearing high tech stud shoes on his feet, and I was sitting in a state-of-the-art German saddle -- yet we hadn't seen anything for hours that was inconsistent with a 14th Century ride in Sherwood Forest. I would not have been shocked if Robin Wood walked out from the honeysuckle. Or even if Braveheart had bashed through with a band of Scottish warriors. Perhaps even the stupid bard in Monty Python singing "Bravely brave Sir Robin, brave Sir Robin ran away!".

Burton and I thought about this for a while. Burton sighed. I sneezed. He was fairly tight-lipped about everything, frankly. I started to whistle Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, no-one could hear me after all. Burton cocked a hind leg and flicked an ear. He ate a branch of something. I looked at the sun between the cedar trees. I saw an airplane way up high on the Eastern jetway. Burton made a funny noise with his nose and tried to avoid a bee. It was lovely.

Then we pretty much ran all the way home -- down honeysuckle hill and through and along the deep bottom and up the five log combo and over the river and up the steep hill and out of the park onto the cornfields at Tranquility and back across the road into the long driveway at Pleasant Prospect. I ducked under branches and generally tried to keep sticks out of my face. Burton jumped oer the swamp roses hanging over the trail to avoid the sticker-bush-in-horse-knee syndrome. We went so fast and so effortlessly through all the Narnia territory that I started to laugh and whoop out loud -- sounds instantly taken away by the breeze. Anyone who saw us would have concluded we were nuts -- horse and rider blasting through the spring woods at top speed amidst gales of laughter.

And then we did see someone. Just before we turned up out of the deep bottom we ran across an angler on the path dressed in true angler gear, complete with things dangling from his hat an everything. Burton stopped short -- we had seen no people or animals for hours. The angler stopped short too. He clearly did not expect to see a sweaty, muddy horse and a mildly hysterical woman. In fact, everyone was quite surprised to see everyone else. Burton questioned the fishing rod. The angler appeared to realize this and backed slowly into the swamp roses and dogwood trees. We nodded hello and went on our way.

Once we were home Burton had a bubble bath and some dinner and then went back out in his field where he told his roommate Stonewall all about his beautiful day in the park.