Another hunting post

How charming the sight when Aurora first dawns,
To see the bright beagles spread over the lawns;
To welcome the sun, now returning from rest,
Their mattins they chant as they merrily quest.

Then hark in the morn, to the call of the horn,
And join with the jovial crea,
While the season invites, with all its delights,
The health-giving chace to pursue.

Well, this was a very different meet than the last Thursday meet I wrote about, and not very much in keeping with the sun-filled verse above. We met at a misty Oakland Green. The field was small, and since the corn's been cut and turned under, the pack was a little slower in finding a scent. Still, we were on our way and I was breathing deeply. And then. We went by Dr. Marion's and two of his family's horses jumped a coop to follow the field. So there was a long period of cowboy/cowgirl work to get the loose ones contained before we could be on our way again.

Then, almost immediately as we moved off, it started to really rain. The whole time we had been out, the cloud ceiling had been slipping down in the sky, until it felt like it was sitting on our shoulders. But then, from the clouds, steady rain. Most of us headed for home. Something about this fixture this year. It really rained the last time we met there, in October. I didn't get quite as soaked this time.

Still, it was beautiful. I always think that the damp in the fall makes the colors more clear and bright and crisp, set off as they are by the dark black branches of wet trees. Until next time.

A Hunting Song

Away to the field, see the morning looks gray,
And, sweetly bedappled, forbodes a fine day;
The hounds are all eager the sport to embrace,
And carol aloud to be led to the chace.
Then hark in the morn, to the call of the horn,
And join with the jovial crew,
While the season invites, with all its delights,
The health-giving chace to pursue.
We had a great day's cubbing from the Glebe a couple of Saturdays ago. We began the day with a viewing-- the youngest riders saw him first across a hilly field. We lost the pack a little bit in the middle of the first run, but recovered nicely and covered a lot of ground. Up Mount Gilead and then down to the swinging bridge through vineyards. Back through the bottom to Askari's, where we ran through fields of wild mint, that lovely scent wafting up from fleet hooves. Crossed the Goose more than once, wading at one point, pony riders picking up their knees. Even on a less-than-eventful day, this is a sport that makes me feel alive and connected. Beautiful day.

The verses above come from a very old book that my mom put in my Christmas stocking several years ago. I don't know anything about it, except that it is a book of songs titled "Roundelay, or the New Soren, a Collection of Choice Songs including the Modern," and was published by Sondon, and "printed for W. LANE, Leadenhall Street", maybe in London? It's about a quarter of the size of a piece of typing paper (trigesimo-segundo, or thirty-twomo size, google tells me) and bound in leather. There are many other verses to this song, and many other songs about the fair sport of foxhunting, so you may see more here in the future. I wish I knew what tune this song might have been sung to!

Hills and Valleys

I definitely do not need another crafty hobby. But this week these ripple stitch crochet blankets have been calling my name, so I've taken up a crochet hook. I'm adding another blanket to the blogosphere, about a year behind the others. This pattern, number 8 'Soft Waves', from Jan Eaton's 200 Ripple Stitch Patterns book, is pretty soothing. And addictive. I sit and crochet and I'm always excited about getting to the next color.

The hills and valleys in the crochet remind me a little of the hills and valleys of Virginia. The last day for the season of foxhunting was Saturday, and despite a little mix-up about the time of the meet, Joshua and I made it there in time. Maybe only you other riders will know what I'm talking about, but it was one of those 'zen' days on horseback. Without thinking about anything, I melted into a kind of meditation of movement and it was just my huntin' horse and me, up and down hills in harmony with the world, for an indeterminate amount of time.

That's not to say it wasn't an eventful day. One woman's horse fell on the blacktopped road and she broke her arm (better at the end of the season than the beginning), and though we asked the ambulance to come without the siren, it wailed and echoed toward us, scaring each of the assembled horses. After the ambulance it began to sleet a little as we moved back into the woods, and I had that winter fort feeling as the sleet fell (c-c-clickclickclick) on millions of leaves and branches overhead. I don't really know where I'm going here. Here's a photo of springtime hills and mountains taken last April. Doesn't it look a little like the crocheted ripples?

Sometimes when I'm riding out, I remember a little passage that I wrote in my journal the first time I went hunting, about 'things I learned'. I was probably about 14. I wrote, "sometimes it's okay to go galloping full-speed down a hill when there's another hill going up to catch you on the other side". It seems like there always is another hill in this part of the world.

PS: I don't know why my posts have seemed a little morose (and perhaps overly philosophical) lately. I'm hoping spring will bring the happy.

Foxhunt Friday: Hilltopping from the Turnpike

The photo above doesn't have anything to do with yesterday's hunting, but I've always really loved the lived-in look of that barn on the corner.

Yesterday was colder than Tuesday and Wednesday were, so I was a little worried about how Joshua would behave. A cold snap sometimes makes a horse crazy or excited. But he was a perfect gentleman for the whole meet. We met at 10 am (gotta love those later meets) at a farm on the Snickersville Turnpike past Sam Fred Road. The country really opens out down there, with large, more manicured farms and more stone walls than you find over our way.

The field was a good Thursday size, about 4 in the first flight and maybe 10 hilltoppers. The two old men on chestnuts were there with their flasks, constantly asking, "have the ladies (point with opened flask here) up front been adequately served?" They do this on Thursdays instead of golf, and one of them has a wife who is honestly named "Queenie". She is very nice.

All this is to say that there was the usual constant chatter from one saddle to another. But there was also a moment when we came up a hill and checked on the top and everything seemed so very clear and still. Almost transcendent. Then an airplane passed high over head and we looked up to trace its path and then almost immediately back down as we heard hound music in the woods below us.

The pack chased two foxes at once, moving in the same direction. Then one fox split off and ran right beside us in the woods below a dam. We heard him (bigger than a squirrel, smaller than a deer) but didn't see him or know it was him until the pack doubled back in our direction and we ran that fox for a good long while. A run like that is joy on the wing.

Those are the two moments that I hope to remember from yesterday: the still, clear one followed by the free, winging one. I think those are the types of moments that I seek in my life as a whole, too. Moments when I'm myself, in focus, immersed in a world fully realized.

Foxhunt Thursday: Hilltopping from Oakland Green

Such fun-- thanks, girls!

Foxhunt Friday: Cubbing from Oakland Green

After the meet: I guess it's about time to clip. Also, I think he's a little tired. In this photo, he's making sure that no hounds followed us home. Josh gets very excited when he gets to go hunting.

We met yesterday morning at Oakland Green, just up the road from the farm, and so I got to hack to the meet. Usually hacking to the meet is beneficial since it uses up most of the horse's nervous energy, but with Josh it's a little tricky because he's so spooky. Nevertheless, we made it to the meet in the mist in time for the 8 o'clock start. Unfortunately, Oakland Green's spring recently ran dry (Rain! Come on!), and so we met across the road from the house in a nice open cow field.

Since this meet is so close to our farm, I'm pretty familiar with this territory, which really opens up past Brown's bottom toward Lincoln. The huntsman cast down the hill toward the bottom, and (after a small delay while we waited for a friend to take a bathroom break in his trailer, and another, scarier delay when a deer bounding out of the woods just next to us misjudged the wire fence and jumped right into it, scaring all of the horses) we were off through the woods. In a flash we came out on the road behind the meet and joined up with Lincoln Road, where we had a full view of the fox, and then of the hounds doing some really good work to get on the scent on the Marshall place.

One neighbor and his horse were so winded after this first twenty-minute run that he and his daughter hacked in for the day (which I think she only agreed to do since she'll be out with Blue Ridge on Saturday). What a way to start the morning!

This great first run was followed by a few shorter gallops through the old Askari place, up and down a couple of doozie hills. Josh always does the same thing when we gallop through Askari's fields. Some old-timers say that certain horses can sense holes in the ground, whether by scent or change of moisture in the air. If this is true, then Josh is certainly one of those horses. Even when I avoid a real ankle-breaker of a hole with plenty of room, Josh will still jump over the place where a straight line from the hole would meet our path. Big, bouncy jumps-- I guess he thinks he's keeping us safe. No matter how many times we went through Askari's place in the same direction this morning (four), Josh jumped in the same spots, "avoiding" the same holes. He's crazy, but at least he's predictable.

Since it was so hot and my horse has yet to be clipped (a project for next week), we came in after about 90 minutes of hunting, and we hacked home. Still spooking all the way.

I'm off to visit my parents and their new dog this weekend, and hopefully to fit in a trip to the North Carolina State Fair. Have a great weekend!

Foxhunt Friday: Cubbing from Burnleigh

I keep forgetting to tuck my tiny camera into my hunt coat, so you continue to get static photos like the one above. But look at that stone! This is one wall of the old barn at the farm.

It was another 7:30 am meet yesterday morning from Burnleigh, a beautiful farm just past Foxcroft School on (surprise!) Foxcroft Road. The day's hunting is probably best described in a couple of vignettes:

Vignette 1, entitled, 'The drought is bad'. The ground was really hard with a very slick top layer of dry dust. My farrier put studs on Joshua's hind feet earlier this week to try to give him some more traction, even though studs are usually reserved for snow and ice. Yesterday, we had moved through a dry valley that's usually marshy bottomland, and the huntsman moved out across a wide creek. Our master rode down into the creek, and we rode downstream through the sandy earth that's usually under the water. It wasn't until we had ridden well down this 'sandbar' in the middle of the creek bed that I realized that we were in the same part of the creek where we had been forced to ford with our stirrups crossed over withers and our feet on the horses' shoulders last year around Christmas! So, the drought is bad. On the (very small) upside, the sandy soil in the bed of the creek was the best footing that we saw all day.

Vignette 2, entitled, 'Mr. Turkey'. About an hour after we set out, we came upon the cutest little farm setup that I've seen in a long while. A yellow stucco main house facing a small yard with mature trees and a small barn and tenant house. Old stone pillars were scattered in the yard and a couple of ponies watched the proceedings with guarded eyes from a paddock just behind the barn. We walked quietly between house and barn, listening with our field master for hound voices. Just as we snuck around the end of the barn, we heard a loud, "Gobgobblegobble!" (say it as fast as you can, and he was faster), and the most beautiful 25-pound turkey you've ever seen (just like this one) came out to let us know who was master of this barnyard. One of the ladies riding with us lives on this little farm and told us that this fine bird is bound for the Thanksgiving table. Our kennelman said, "We'll see what he has to say about that!" And we all laughed, but it really did seem as though the turkey might give his axman a run for his money. As we walked away from the barnyard, still straining to hear hounds, we heard the occasional "Gobgobblegobble," a good-riddance from our turkey friend.

All in all, not a terribly exciting day, but each and every person with whom we hunted yesterday was just delightful, and it was great fun to be outside in the air and the country. And one thing you can say about starting your day at 4 am is that it sure makes bedtime feel good.

Weekend Update: Cubbing from Willow Oaks

This week was spent in a haze of cold medicine and sleep, which is why there was no posting past Monday. I rallied enough by the end of the week to go cubbing yesterday morning from Willow Oaks, near Glenwood Park in Middleburg. This meet has a very oblique driveway, and to get into the driveway from the farm, I have to go to Glenwood Park and turn around so that I'm angled in the right direction. Yesterday, I had to do this twice since I got there too early (6:40 for a 7:30 meet!), having misjudged the length of the drive.

The meet was a relatively small one, with perhaps 10 riders in the first field and 8 in the second. One member rode sidesaddle. The huntsman drew down the driveway and back around to the rear of the property, where we waited for the call on top of the hill. Willow Oaks is beautiful rolling country with stone walls and reasonable coops. About half of the territory is wooded, and that portion can be very hilly.

Anyway, on the first draw we saw the hounds shoot out of the woods hot on the tail of a beautiful red fox. We had a great view as the fox ran one field over, and then we were off. It was a fun and relaxed day, perfect for cub hunting and legging up the horses. Since I rode second flight (all the better to have a calm, early-season experience for the horse-- and me), the only tricky moment came at a check on a very steep hill. There was little room to maneuver off the sandy, slick path in the woods, and Josh got a little anxious as we waited at the check for about 10 minutes. Other horses were more anxious than Joshua, though, so I suppose I have very little to complain about. Overall, a very enjoyable day. Good commeraderie with other riders and smiles all around.

As I was riding up one of the many hills of the day at a gallop yesterday, I realized what the smell of a really good run is. Wet wool. Both the wool of my horse's sheepskin saddle pad and that of my hunt coat. It was a good day.

The photo above really reminds me of September in Virginia. A beautiful clear and breezy sky, bright clean light, and the promise of winter to come-- look at the clouds in the very top of the picture!)

Foxhunt Friday: Cubbing from Mount Pleasant

Alas no foxhunting photo, but I had to share the view from the barn. Beautiful, huh? That's Crow tied to his favorite tree taking a nap before his ride. On to hunting. We met yesterday at Mount Pleasant, a farm on one of the roads that runs between 15 and 50 south of Aldie. The farm is across the road from the National Beagle Club's Institute Farm. This area of country is wide-open and picturesque. Several times during the morning's hunting we came out of woods to a sudden sweeping view of grassy valleys below.

About 15 riders made up the field. Thursday was my first time out for the season, so I had planned to hilltop (go with the second "field" or "flight" of riders, which doesn't jump but goes through gates instead), but there are few coops in this part of the territory, and I thought Josh would be up for whatever we came to, so I decided to go first flight. At first. The huntsman drew toward Landfall Farm, and we were all impressed with how closely he held the pack together as we set out (this is this huntsman's first year with our hunt).

We had a check high up on a hill and we watched hounds work through fields and a small pond before hitting the first line. Unfortunately, the check gave me time to contemplate a couple of 10-board coops that we could see at the bottom of the hill. The riders (removable horizontal boards to make the jumps level with the rest of the fence so that livestock can't escape) were up, which meant that we probably wouldn't jump them, but they were enough to scare me back into the second flight. Which was just as well. No one, first flight or second, ended up jumping anything more than some small logs in the woods, but the day was a good one for just getting out there and exposing the horse to some hounds. The weather was beautiful and the air was clear (but for the dust kicked up by hooves), and we had a very enjoyable morning. The one down point was when we ran into a couple of bulldozers in the woods near the Institute-- bulldozers are definitely one way to put hounds off of scent! The development is coming everywhere.

I hope these foxhunting entries won't be too boring to readers who don't ride, but I'm excited to have a record of my hunting days. I tried to find an online dictionary of foxhunting terms to link to explanations of some of the terms here but I couldn't find a good one, so I'll have to keep explaining in parentheses, I guess. Also, we can all hope that maybe soon I'll get better at writing about the action. Have a great weekend.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

It's dinosaur season. Mornings on the farm are misty and mysterious. As the days get shorter and the nights linger longer, that shape in the foggy distance could be anything, and often is a fox or a baby deer or a calf hidden in a tuft of grass by his mother.

My friend Noelle named dinosaur season one morning six autumns ago, when she and Karen and I were going out to catch horses in the field. In the pre-dawn of a 7 am meet foxhunting day the fog was so thick that we could barely see our feet, much less the horses. The horses became suddenly visible only when we were right on top of them, and then they were as surprised to see us as we were to find them. They were our dinosaurs, emerging from the eternal mist. Dinosaur season is short-- soon the nights will be even longer and the days shorter, and the hunt will meet later in the morning to account for the dark and the dropping temperatures.

For now, though, I really love my misty early mornings. So quiet and soft that they could have happened in almost any era, and yet so close and insular that they hold me in this moment. Later, as the fog burns up and we gallop through the valley, the dinosaurs are gone and the modern is visible in the forms of shiny cars and big rigs. But the mist lingers as a sort of meditation in my mind-- a beautiful way to start the day.
And here are some lovely virtual flowers for my equally lovely mother, whose birthday is today. These are the last of the summer blooms from our farm share, and the marigolds smell so good I can hardly stand it. Their scent lingers on my hands (much more pleasant than garlic-linger, don't you think?) and I wonder why someone doesn't make eau de parfum de marigold. Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you very much.

I-9, Chase A Myth

Here's another lovely Dear Jane block done up in batik. I can't get enough of these fabrics, and I think it runs in the family, as my mother has a healthy stack of them as well. This quilt is turning out to be a pretty good way to show them. Something about the very traditional blocks balances out that wild tie-dyed pattern.

I also quite like the name of this block. Sometimes I feel like I am chasing myths. Definitely with the foxhunting, and also with building a home and a family with my husband. But we also make myths of our own. Stories to tell over and over.

Unfortunately I won't be making any myths (ha!) out hunting this week. Yesterday I had a little mishap involving day-old baguette and a serrated knife that landed me in the emergency room for a few stitches and a splint. So the foxhunting (and the foxhunting stories) will have to wait until next week. In the meantime, here's a little photo of me on the horse today with my everyday 'pack' of one. (If you look closely you might be able to make out my purple be-vet-rapped left pointer finger. Please excuse the very goofy hat-- I need a new rubber band for the cover.)

Work Day

Do you ever have days where there's so much to do that you'll never finish it all, but somehow you're still calm and collected and things move steadily forward, one task accomplished after another? Today is one of those days for me. There's a certain rhythm going, of preparations, housework and making, and I'm so grateful that this day is lilting along.

On another note, I love this super-saturated photo of bridles hanging in the tack room. Some of the preparations that I'm making these days are for the foxhunting season, which began (with cubbing) on Labor Day. My horse and I will probably go out for the first time next Thursday, for a 7 am meet in the fog, and I thought I'd do a little foxhunting feature on Fridays starting next week. There aren't enough blogs out there about horses and riding-- probably because the actual riding takes so blame long. Anyway, I hope I don't bore any non-riding readers with my little hunt season diversion.