Exploring the lure of horse country in Washington

I pretended that I saw a fox lurking behind a bush, enjoying the fact that with the drying of the golden grass, his scent was becoming less and less available to any packs of hounds that might be in the neighborhood. I have fox-hunted only once or twice, back in St. Charles County, Missouri, when I was 14, but it has always simultaneously fascinated, frightened and repelled me. The animals, the speed and danger, the Englishness, the landscape. I imagine the fox resting under a bush, sneering at the eager hounds and the observant horses.

I imagine that the horse knows where he is. The horse’s ears flick, but he says nothing (horses are good talkers, as anyone who has read “Black Beauty” knows).

In this horsy mid-southeast region, there are 15 registered packs of foxhounds between Charlottesville and Leesburg, and six more across the river in Maryland. They still hunt — no ban here, like the English ban of 2004 — maybe because U.S. fox hunters like to chase the fox but do not insist upon killing it.

Back in Carmel Valley, I have four horses. I ride two of them almost every day, and even on bad days, I appreciate their opinions, their beauty, their distinct differences from one another. On good days, I appreciate the four-beat energy of the trot, the waltz-like three-quarter rhythm of the canter, the loose relaxation of a good walk, the reciprocity between horse and human that can be smooth and can be electric. But wherever I am, I appreciate looking at horses, or paintings of horses, or books about horses in bookstores.

I noticed that across from the Safeway in Middleburg was the Sporting Gallery, featuring mid-20th-century paintings by Michael Lyne, an English artist who came to the United States in his 30s. The gallery was seductively residential — in each room, I could imagine tables, chairs, rest and relaxation. Lyne’s horses are graceful thoroughbred-types, jumping jumps, galloping across green fields, an ideal sky graced by drifting white clouds forming the backdrop.

A watercolor sketch of a woman riding a gray mare who is standing quietly, her ears pricked as if she is listening for the hounds, was irresistible, partly because Lyne painted it in 1949, the year I was born. It is the same age as I am.

More was at work here, though — Lyne was the illustrator for a book I loved as a child, “A Second Treasury of Horse Stories,” edited by Margaret Cabell Self. I often sat on the floor of my bedroom, in St. Louis County, poring over the illustrations, fantasizing about my own equine best friend. Soon to come? Never to come? I had no idea.

Almost lunchtime — I was on my way to the Middleburg Classic AA Hunter Show at Morven Park, a famous equestrian estate once owned by Westmoreland Davis, governor of Virginia from 1918 to 1922. The show is solely for “hunters,” horses that gallop calmly and resolutely over any jump they are pointed at (the horses that jump the biggest jumps and go to the Olympics are called “jumpers” — the “hunters” category is different, but some horses do both or start as one and switch to the other). I would guess that these show hunters, sleek and fatter than our California mounts, do not regularly fox hunt during the winter season, because most of them are worth tens of thousands of dollars. But their calm reliability, talent over fences and fitness are the ideals that have formed their show careers.

The grounds were in a spacious hollow, the rows of trees along the surrounding ridges blocking the view, their leaves shading toward autumnal reds and rusts. The show was a more laid-back affair than shows I’ve been to elsewhere, but it is important; these horses were in contention for various end-of-year championships, which are about prestige, not about big purses. Watching them was soothing — they so clearly knew what they were doing and enjoyed themselves.

After leaving Morven Park, I explored some back roads, seductive and narrow, winding and dipping between farms and estates, running through towns with evocative names like Purcellville and Philomont (although I didn’t make it to Stumptown). Here and there a field of corn or a field of soybeans was tucked away; other local crops were vegetables, hay, tobacco, tomatoes, cotton, wheat, peanuts and barley. Once, famous racehorses were bred in Virginia, none more celebrated than Secretariat, winner of the 1973 Triple Crown, who was born at Meadow Farm in Caroline County.

Outside of Horse Country, a tack store in Warrenton, stands a gray statue of a horse wearing a blanket. The doors were open, and inside, the ambience was elegant upstairs (chandeliers, dishware, books) and practical downstairs (breeches, boots, rain jackets). The proprietor, Marion Maggiolo, told me when we begin chatting that Rita Mae Brown, author of dozens of novels and mysteries and master of the Oak Ridge Fox Hunt Club, in Afton, began one of her “Sister Jane” fox-hunting mysteries with a corpse astride the mannequin horse outside the entrance.

Maggiolo laughed. She doesn’t need the advertising; Horse Country is a famous tack store, and for good reason, as I discovered when I started trying on breeches downstairs. Maggiolo has a huge stock geared toward all sorts of styles and body shapes. Riders are picky (I am picky). We want comfort but also not to look too terrible. I chose a pair from the house brand — dark gray and stretchy, “full seat,” which means that the slightly rough padding between the knees extends all the way up and over, giving me just a little more attachment to the saddle.

I looked at boots, used and new, old style (thick and cylindrical) and new style (supple and tight — one pair looked as if it was made of alligator skin), but I have plenty of boots.

I might have lived here. I did work at a camp in Northern Virginia in the summer of 1967, between high school and college. It was hot but no hotter than St. Louis and a smidgen less humid. If I had been able to talk my mother into letting me go to Sweet Briar, the small women’s college outside of Lynchburg long known for its equestrian and liberal arts programs, instead of Vassar, I might have ended up in Virginia permanently.

And then, when I quit teaching at Iowa State in the mid-'90s and was deciding to leave Iowa, the choice was between Virginia and California. Although there are horses in Iowa, Iowa is not horse country and I had decided to follow that old horsy dream. All winter, I read articles in The Chronicle of the Horse about there being so much snow and ice in Virginia that horses were sliding down the hillsides in their pastures. Twenty-four years in Iowa had given me my fill of snow and ice, and so I chose the Monterey Peninsula, in California, the place where the Pebble Beach equestrian center is only a few miles from the Salinas Rodeo.

But still. On my way back to my hotel, I pulled over to look at a farm for sale: stone house, 12 flat acres, decent fencing. Grass. Trees. Rainfall. Temptation flickered.

Spring

As my husband, Jack, and I drove to the Maryland Grand National, one of three famous timber races (in which the horses jump over solid rail fences) put on each April, what we couldn’t get over were the flowering pear and crab apple trees, the weeping cherries, the magnolias, the startling forsythia, that announce the onset of spring. Maryland horse country is wider and flatter than Virginia horse country, maybe even rainier.

The Maryland Grand National, near Reisterstown, is somewhere in the tradition of the Grand National at Aintree, in England, which was first run in 1839 and is perhaps the most challenging and famous horse race in the world (see “National Velvet”), but the jumps here are lower, 3-foot-6 rather than 5 feet, and the pace is vigorous but not rigorous. It costs $40 to park your car, and if you really want to have the Grand National experience, you must buy your way into the donors’ tent, where food is free, expensive items are being auctioned and women are wearing chapeaus and elegant dresses. Jack and I did not buy our way in, but Jack, former real estate agent that he is, didn’t hesitate to sneak around the fence.

Just before the race, all the suits and dresses and glasses of Champagne moved across the course to the far hillside, which has the best view of the last few jumps and the finish line. The purse for the race was $30,000, not much (the purse for the Grand National at Aintree this year was 1 million pounds). At Aintree, there were 39 horses in the race. Here there were nine or 10. This modesty is a signal that the Maryland Grand National is a social event for daring amateurs.

The field of horses begins the race the way it was done in the old days in England, not out of a starting gate, but walking in a circle as the flag goes up and then comes down. The drumming of their hooves on the course is muffled by a rich, thick carpet of grass. They go far away, come back, do it twice. Someone won, but I couldn’t see who.

Our bed-and-breakfast, an hour away in Elkton, Maryland, was old and imaginative — every room is painted with locally themed murals. The theme of ours was Fair Hill, the local state-run equestrian park that was once a du Pont estate. The ceiling was pale blue, with clouds. Foxes hid in the corners. Above the bathtub, a horse was bucking his rider off as he took a fence.

At Fair Hill, 8 miles from the B&B, we went first to the Fair Hill International Combined Training event. Combined Training, or “eventing,” owes its origins to the British cavalry. It has three phases: dressage (where the rider and the horse perform precise movements in a rectangular arena, not unlike ice skating routines); cross country (where the horse and rider gallop over a course of several miles, jumping sometimes very odd jumps, including brush, logs, water, banks and table jumps); and stadium jumping (where the horse and rider jump a tighter course inside a separate, larger arena, to prove that the horse is both sound and controllable after his cross-country adventure).

Combined Training is not as popular as horse showing, but it is an Olympic sport and has a passionate and athletic following. Jack and I walked out to the cross-country course down a long wooded path. No leaves on the trees, yet, but cool sunshine through the limber, awakening branches. We passed a few riders, all first level, not quite beginners. Everyone had survived the cross country and was blown-out, a little exhausted.

When I first got back into horses in my 40s, eventing was my preferred sport. But it was too much for me. When I passed a friendly woman on a lovely mare, I stopped to congratulate her on her ride. She was alight, thrilled and, I’ll bet, relieved.

Up the hill from the event venue was the Fair Hill Point-to-Point, a day of races not unlike the Maryland Grand National, but with no purses, only trophies. These were jump races for locals and horse people, most of whom know each other. Members of the hunt club also based at Fair Hill were dressed in their formal hunting attire. They accompany the racehorses and their jockeys onto the course and wait for them to finish the race.

We sat in the stands, watched the third pony race, and then the leadline race, where two children in jockeys’ silks were led at a trot for about 100 yards. The pony carrying the older child (about 7) was faster, but the dark bay minihorse, maybe 36 inches at the shoulder, was all business, carrying his 4-year-old jockey (who posted beautifully) straight down the course to win by a length. We applauded and laughed and waited for the Heavyweight race, in which the horses must carry 190 pounds (rider, saddle, weights if necessary) over jumps.

As at the Maryland Grand National, the horses start in the old way, carry their riders at a brisk but not punishing pace and jump many timber jumps — all about 3-foot-6. Some of these horses are in their teens and have aged well. They gallop and jump with interest and enthusiasm. I think that this is what racing ought to be, a pleasure and a sport, not a business. No money in it, of course.

The money was across the road, at the Fair Hill Training Center. There are two racetracks in Maryland: Pimlico (where the Preakness is held) and Laurel Park. Most racehorse trainers in the United States keep their horses at the racetrack, but the Fair Hill Training Center was designed to operate on European principles. Trainers are based there, the way French trainers are based at Maisons-Laffitte, 14 miles northwest of Paris, and the horses live there most of the time, going to the tracks only to run in particular races.

The 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds can get turned out or taken by their riders for a ramble around the countryside. A friend of mine, who came over from Ireland and ended up at Santa Anita, the track in Pasadena, California, once worked as an exercise rider here. One of his pleasures was crossing the road and riding in occasional point-to-points on the weekend.

To me, this seems like a sane, and maybe relaxed, way to treat racehorses, giving them some turn-out time and some countryside and some walks through the woods rather than keeping them in stalls 23 hours a day. The Fair Hill Training Center produces plenty of good runners — the winner of the 2011 Kentucky Derby and the 2013 Dubai World Cup, Animal Kingdom, was trained here by H. Graham Motion.

I probably will not move here, Maryland or Virginia, in spite of the lovely roads and houses, the equines grazing in their green pastures behind white rail fences along the roads that dip into valleys and rise over hills, their flowered trees fluttering in a light breeze, as if they were routine rather than eye-popping. Temptation remains, itself a pleasure, but not great enough to overcome the impracticalities.

It is true — in Maryland and Virginia horse country, we are halfway to Europe (Ascot and Chantilly for racing, Blenheim Castle for eventing, Dublin for horse showing), although the job of most horses here is not to make a lot of money, just to make use of the countryside, to live long and gallop.