Norman Fine

Karen Myers photoIn my last blog, “How I Came to Go Foxhunting,” I told my story, and readers gave us some good stories in return. (See the Comments section after the blog and our Facebook page.) The next logical step in this tell-me-a-story series is “My First Foxhunt.” What do we remember aside from that kaleidoscopic blur of new images and sensations? Once again, I’ll tell you my story, then you can tell us yours.

The things that stick in my mind from my first foxhunt forty-five years ago, surprisingly, have little to do with foxhunting. Hounds? I’m sure there was a pack of foxhounds involved, but they certainly don’t stand out in my mind. As I explained in my last blog, I came to hunting through a love of horses.

Like most first-time foxhunters, I suppose I was primarily concerned with complying with the bewildering rules of hunting etiquette and with keeping me and my horse out of trouble. There are, however, two things I do remember about that day with perfect clarity: (1) romance and (2) the late J. Quincy Adams, MFH.

Karen Myers photoI can’t help but notice that this week’s topics constitute a comprehensive and balanced offering. Music, food, art, and foxhunting. What more could any sportsman want from life? Okay, okay, but let's just leave it this way!

Music:

Listen, then download another of Edwin Hall’s country foxhunting songs. Learn the chorus, and you won’t be able to resist singing along!

Food:

Check out the winners in this year’s hunt breakfast recipe contest. As our judge Juliet Mackay-Smith says, there are so many fine recipes in so many categories that selecting the winners presented her with very hard choices.

Art:

Linda Volrath describes art as a visual language in which the artist attempts to capture a fleeting image along with the mood of the moment and communicate it to the viewer in a permanent way. Foxhunting Life is proud to feature both her oil paintings and the philosophy behind her endeavors.

In case you haven’t noticed, I have a new book out: Foxhunting Adventures: Chasing the Story. It’s a collection of thirty-two of my foxhunting stories, the earliest ones written over forty years ago. I’ll be signing books at various locations over the next few months, and if you’re in the neighborhood or are planning on attending any of the following events, please stop and say hello. Here’s my schedule as it stands now:

September 5: Hunt Night at the Warrenton Horse Show. I’ll be with Jan Neuharth and Vicki Moon who will be signing their books as well.
September 15 (10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.): Tri-County Feeds, Etc., Marshall, VA
September 17: Blue Ridge Fall Races Calcutta Night at Woodley, Berryville, VA
October 8: Locke’s Store wine tasting, Millwood, VA
October 18: Hunt Night at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show, Harrisburg, PA
October 27: Chevy Chase Club, Chevy Chase, MD
November 5: Belle Meade Opening Meet, Thomson, GA

What a response we had from our recent free hunting horn ring-tone offer! We thought it would be a fun way of celebrating the start of the new foxhunting season, and we were right. Here’s what some of you had to say: Send me ‘doubling.’ I am enjoying your website immensely! Ilove the ring-tones! I want them all. I am going to forward your email to all 600 of my ** fox hunting folks. What a clever idea! Thank you. I really have to say, hearing John Tabachka blow ‘Going Home’ is very moving. Really amazing, indeed. I really enjoy your newsletter and website! I’m a huge fan of John and his calls. I am looking forward to driving my teenage children (and everyone else around me) crazy. We’re happy everyone is having fun with it. Remember, however, if any of you forget to turn off your ringer while in the hunting field, and the huntsman’s wrath descends upon you, we don’t know you!August 24, 2010

Continuing my theme on the intersection of people and places, FHL subscribers might remember the story that Noel Mullins sent us last month about the Galway Blazers’ Puppy Show. The story was accompanied by a Mullins photograph of the Blazers’ long-serving MFH and huntsman Michael Dempsey. I was thrilled to see the photo, for I have my own memories of Michael Dempsey.

Before Dempsey became Master of the Blazers, he whipped-in to the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith and the Bermingham and North Galway hounds. In that capacity both he and she are principal characters in one of the stories—a true ghost story that happened forty years ago—in my book, Foxhunting Adventures. So Mullins and I exchanged memories of our mutual connections.

The intersection of people and places is sometimes wondrously coincidental. Irish photojournalist Noel Mullins and I have recently discovered foxhunting friends we have in common from County Galway some forty years since. More than friends, these were larger-than-life individuals enormously influential in the process that turned each of us into the foxhunting men we became.

Fast forward, and here is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of my book, Foxhunting Adventures: Chasing the Story, describing a large painting hanging in the dining room in Bermingham House, County Galway, home of the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith, MFH:

"Dominating the end wall above the sideboard and presiding in spirit equal to Molly’s presence, gray-whiskered John Denis surveys all from the saddle. This dramatic nineteenth-century portrait of man, horse, and hound in a graceful swirl of motion and muscle was presented to him by grateful members of the Galway field."