The showers that had earlier been predicted for today never materialized, and the day dawned cloudy but dry. It might have even been called dismal or dreary by someone less enlightened, but it looked like a perfect hunting day to me. One minor problem was that I felt like crap, and I was reasonably sure it had nothing to do with 3 beers and most of a bottle of wine at dinner the night before. This involved hacking and sneezing, which are not typical hangover symptoms. But, having promised several Bitch Pack members that I would be out today, my honor was in serious peril if I wimped out. Besides, I couldn’t think of any better therapy than being out on a horse with a bunch of friends
The biggest problem with hunting with a mystery ailment was that the possibility of contagion made the traditional flask sharing seem unwise. So I anti-socially nursed my own flask of Woodford Reserve, sharing with noone, and politely declined all the other flasks that were passed in my direction. The wisdom of that decision became even more apparent when I returned home and discovered I had a fever of 101+. Clearly this was something best not shared with friends. Unfortunately, with no assistance from others, draining my own flask was an impossible task, or at least extremely unwise. I hope St. Hubert will consider the mitigating circumstances and grant me absolution for the minor sin of leaving the field with an almost-full flask.
Aside from the crimp in the traditional communal libation, it was a quite enjoyable day, much more so than if I had stayed at home feeling sorry for myself. We had a fairly good run for a while, and Arthur was jumping nicely. After a while, a couple of us got left behind as we stopped to close a gate as the rest of the field moved on. For a while, we moved at a reasonable pace in what seemed like the right direction, catching occasional glimpses of horses far in the distance. Finally, I decided Arthur was tiring, and we realistically had little chance of catching the group as long as they were moving away from us. So we decided on a variation of the old bull wisdom: “Let’s just wait here and let them come to us”.
This doesn’t always work, but in this case it seemed prudent. There was a good chance that the field would circle back towards us, especially since we were between them and the trailers. After a while, our prudence was rewarded as they did head back toward us and we triumphantly rejoined them, only to be scandalously accused of deliberately getting lost for ulterior motives, a horribly unfair accusation considering that I wasn’t even sharing flasks with anyone.