Betsy and friends escape frozen Virginia for a week of hunting in warmer climes. We bring you her daily blog, exclusive to Foxhunting Life.
First Installment
Don Palus, Dawn Cline, Maggie Johnston, and Jackie Burke stretch their horses’ legs in the Hitchcock Woods in preparation for Hunt Week in Aiken, SC.
It poured rain last night. Woke up several times with rain pelting the tin roof of our cottage, but when I opened the door to see if we were going to float away I couldn’t help notice it was weirdly warm. Like sixty degrees warm! Odd.
This morning dawned light and sunny and toasty warm. I stripped down to just my turtleneck layer for the horse trials next door.
At Full Gallop Farm, they hold training horse trials—intermediate level all the way down to beginner novice—attracting hundreds of competitors. Our Hunt Week crew is volunteering for duty to “earn” the right to school/ride/hack over their hundreds of acres of cross country jumps, show jumping fences, and dressage arenas.
Maggie Johnston, Dawn Cline, and I helped with dressage ring stewards. Jackie Burke, my mom, did bit check at dressage. Don Palus did jump judging on the intermediate and preliminary cross country. (He judged a huge but simple and straightforward “pheasant feeder” jump that riders could really gallop over. Beautiful.)
After lunch we went to the Hitchcock Woods in downtown Aiken, a two-thousand-acre public park with hundreds of miles of maintained trails, an interesting “sand river” that “flows” thru the middle, a training track on a lovely hilltop, and hundreds of inviting log jumps and (genuine) Aiken fences, set in lines of four, five, six, or more dozens of strides apart that are intended to help teach horses and riders to sit quietly and really gallop down over the jumps. (Similar to the Hunter’s Rest “Aiken line” down by the river, but bigger!)
Don rode Frosty (the horse he’ll hunt this week), Dawn rode Tip (the horse she’ll hunt), Maggie rode her Savanna, I rode PB and Jackie rode X. We entered at the Laurens Road/South Boundary parking area, following the sand lane in past the old Aiken Hounds kennels, Memorial Gate into the Aiken Horse Show grounds and the Menage schooling area. There, we ran into fellow Virginians Bob Best and Paula Michels from Fairfax/Snickersville hunts. We gabbed for a bit then set off at a smart trot down Peek-A-Boo Lane (so-named because it was a favorite of teen lovers for necking) to Cathedral Aisle (part of an old railroad bed, where the first steam engine used to run—now a lovely, long, level path in the Hitchcock Woods). From there, we turned uphill towards Black Gum Pond and the High Point Line, then back down Woodcut into the Menage from the south.
We schooled a bit over the log jumps and coops, ending with a flourish over the single Aiken fence in the schooling area. PB was lazy. Frosty was perfect. Savanna was perfect. Jackie opted out of jumping but schooled Dawn (who has little experience jumping) over some smaller fences with Tip. She did well.
As we headed back, trying to find our way across the Sand River to Coker Lane to return via the fancy horse district of town, we ran into another Virginia crew—Blue Ridge Hunt Master Doris Stimpson, her daughter Catherine, and friend Robin Richards (Virginia Thoroughbred Association president). They are nearing the end of their week’s stay in Aiken, but will be hunting with us on Friday.
We hustled back to the farm to wash the grays (Frosty and PB are hunting tomorrow) and wipe off tack. We all decided the “come as you are” cocktail party probably didn’t “really” mean come as we were, so we tidied up and went to a gorgeous for-sale property on Newberry Street in the horse district. I never confirmed the price but the house is lovely and historic and filled with beautiful hardwood floors and interesting architecture.
There are foxhunters from across the region and the nation represented at the Whiskey Road Hunt Week—from Toronto and North York (ON); to Millbrook (NY); to Cheshire (PA); to Fairfax, Old Dominion (my crew), Blue Ridge and Snickersville (VA); to Long Run (KY); to Goshen and Newmarket Middletown (MD); Red Mountain (NC); Santa Ynez (CA), and I’m sure lots more. It is a real pleasure to make new friends and meet old acquaintances. Never more evident is the Six Degrees of Separation effect than in the horse world. Hell, I’d bet its more like a Single Degree of Separation in the hunting community.
Off to bed early tonight—stirrup cup before a 10:00 am meet in Batesburg, a dozen miles east of where we’re staying. No breakfast afterwards but a cocktail party downtown at Folly and dinner to follow at Malia. To be continued….
Posted Feb. 4, 2011