(Mine, and the one everyone else went on)
It was the best of times;
it was the worst of times.
It was wisdom of bringing along a GPS;
it was the foolishness of leaving spurs & crop in the trailer.
It was the belief that I would have a companion on The Short Bus;
it was the last-minute incredulity that said companion would instead be trailing the fieldmaster.
It was the season of bright sunshine;
it was the season of wind and frozen water buckets.
It was spring in Phoenix;
It was winter in Flagstaff.
They had the fieldmaster before them;
we had nothing but mesquite brush before us.
They were all going direct to the quarry;
we were going direct the other way.
If you’d like to skip all the sniveling and go straight to the photos, they’re here: Western Hunt Challenge 2009 - Paradise Valley Beagles
Where to begin? :sigh:
The plan was that rivenoak’s sister, who’s been riding with me for several months now, helping me keep The Boys legged up, and who’s been on The Short Bus at a couple hunts, would join me on The Short Bus for beagle/harrier day at the WHC in Flagstaff. She was going to ride a Section D Welsh Cob belonging to one of our members. So much for great plans…
As we’re getting tacked up Sunday morning (after removing the 3 layers of clothing wrapped around poor Mr. Blondie against the TWELVE DEGREE [yes, Fahrenheit] night), sis comes over and tells me that the woman whose horse she is riding is going to be fieldmaster, and she’s got to tuck her horse’s nose up the FM’s horse’s butt so that she (the horse, not the FM) will be well-behaved.
Great.
<insert some sniveling here about this sudden change in plans, which left me companionless>
The first mistake of the day was probably continuing to tack up, rather than just packing it in right there. Whether or not that’s actually true, it was DEFINITELY a mistake when I noticed that I hadn’t put my spurs on… and elected not to make the effort to get them out of the by-then-locked tack room and try to put them on while juggling an already-bridled Mr. Blondie. I also didn’t have my Beating Stick.
So I’m trying not to panic, while casting about for someone who looks like a likely back-of-the-packer. I sort of attach myself to the rear edge of the field, and the hounds move out. They head in one direction, but as we’re ambling after them, we realize that they’ve turned back, so we wait until they’ve gone past and follow along.
It was cold. And it was windy. And there were probably 3 times the normal number of riders. And twice the number of hounds. Mr. Blondie was a little prancy. Nothing bad; just that bouncy half-walk, half-trot that tells me he’s getting wound up.
And it continued to get worse as we worked our way up the hill. He spied a rearing horse and thought that was Just Wrong. I had just decided that I needed to turn back (yes, I’m a major candy-ass weenie) when I spied a couple women from our hunt who were walking along quietly. So I went over and asked if they were planning to trot, or just walk. One said she was walking now, but would trot later. The other said she was willing to walk with me.
On we went. Mr. Blondie eventually calmed down enough that he was on the buckle a fair bit of the time, and we had a nice, quiet ride over a hill and down the other side through the black lava sand. At one point, we saw a jack come bounding by, but the hounds missed it. We were almost to the field when they came blasting past us in the other direction, and we had a great view of them cantering past–including Rob Kornacki, one of the judges, in a full-tilt gallop like he was in the 6th race at Santa Anita. Way cool to see.
We slid in at the back of the field after they went past, and not too long after that, we caught up with them. They were all walking. Mr. Blondie was fine, but I knew that he was NOT going to be fine if everyone took off. Third (fourth?) mistake of the day was not trying to extract my erstwhile walking companion from the center of the field before… as was inevitable… the hounds struck a scent and took off.
I did try moving Mr. Blondie forward at the trot, but he was not interested in trotting, and I was not interested in galloping (that whole candy-ass weenie thing). So I stopped him, and he started backing up. Remember where my spurs & whip were? That’s right… back at the trailer. I’m sure it would have been quite amusing–had anyone been around to see it–as I Thelwell-kicked the heck out of him with my spurless boots and he continued to back up.
:sigh:
Just in case a black hole had somehow appeared behind us and was sucking him in, I tried turning him around. And he backed in the other direction. Yes, I know he was being very naughty. Yes, I know I should have figured out some way to deal with it that pointed out that I was in charge. Unfortunately, at that point, HE was in charge. So I got off and started to lead him back to the trailers… or rather, to where my GPS was telling me the trailers were.
[Brief aside here to confess that I hadn’t thoroughly tested the “go-to” feature of my GPS… who knew that it didn’t default to the last waypoint entered? Not me, clearly. :rolleyes: Turns out it was leading me back to Phoenix. But I digress…]
After we had walked for a while, he calmed down and stopped craning his head around to find the hunt. I found a tree stump that seemed sturdy & tall enough, and got back in the saddle. If I hadn’t been feeling so bummed about (once again) dropping out of the hunt, I would really have enjoyed the ride. It was a lovely, sunny day for a trail ride. Back to Phoenix.
I finally got to the point where I was quite sure that we were NOT heading back towards the trailers, so I investigated the GPS menu a bit more… and discovered that we were going to the wrong waypoint. Fixed that, and we were about 3.5 km from the trailers. We hadn’t been going in completely the wrong direction; we were more circling around the trailers than going directly to them. Along about then I started trying not to think about what might happen if one of us got hurt… or if we never did manage to find the trailers.
We continued to head towards the trailers. We even trotted a bit. The footing was lovely–more of that lava sand, with scattered rocks, but not so many that the footing was bad. We had to dodge mesquite trees now & then, but the GPS kept us on track.
And then… a truck came along a road that was maybe 100 yards or so off to our right. And Mr. Blondie’s head went up in the air, and he started backing up again. More futile Thelwell kicking. (I later decided that he was also probably hearing the hunt as they went over the hill on the other side of the road–too far away for me to hear, but probably not for him.)
Given the choice between getting off & walking again or dying of old age on my eternally-backing Yellow Horse, I chose the former. I gotta say, hiking along in tall boots at 7000 feet with a horse who keeps turning around to see what’s behind him (nothing, as far as I could tell) provides quite the workout.
Just before I completely ran out of steam, I spied some rocks that seemed a likely mounting block. Managed to get him to stand next to them after some cajoling (and, yes, cussing) and heaved my breathless self into the saddle once again. And we continued on towards the trailers, which soon (this would be a relative sort of “soon”) appeared in the distance. We also saw a couple riders walking back, which resulted in much whinnying and muttering from Mr. Blondie. They ignored him. We trudged on.
Then we saw a large group of riders off to our right… a big trail ride? Couldn’t see/hear any hounds, and I was sure that the hunt was somewhere behind us… but (once again) it turned out I was wrong. They had somehow snuck around us and were just finishing up their day. So we managed to be in the perfect position to watch everyone come in.
In looking at the timestamps on the photos I took, it appears that we were wandering around by ourselves for about an hour & a half–a half hour longer than we had been with / trying to find the hunt in the first place.
Oh, well. Breakfast was marvelous, as always, and the drive back down the hill to warm civilization was uneventful. And I can only hope that by next season, I’ll have forgotten all about this and will be once again ready to pretend that I’m actually a good enough rider to brave the hunt field.
Or perhaps I’ll take up needlepoint.
(Special thanks are owed to Steve & Laura Parker, who provided Mr. Blondie a stall so he wouldn’t be out in the nasty cold without shelter.)
