Middleburg Hunt Country

Author's Comments

The first time I drove Route 50 west of Middleburg at dawn I almost pulled the car over three separate times before I actually did. There is a quality to the fog that settles into those pastures in early October that I have not found anywhere else in the region. It holds to the low ground in long pale ribbons, and the horses come out of it in pieces - a flank, a tail, the curve of a neck - before the whole animal resolves against the hill behind. The stone walls run for miles. Some of them are older than the country. The village itself is a different kind of photograph. Federal brick and stone storefronts in a row, the Red Fox Inn anchoring the corner since 1728, the sidewalks narrow and mostly empty before nine. I tend to work the edges of town first, where the pasture meets the last buildings and the light still has some angle to it, then walk the main street once the shopkeepers have begun opening their doors. The details reward a slower eye - boot scrapers set into stone thresholds, the hand-painted signs, the brass on the tack shop doors. Go in October for the color or in late April for the foals and the dogwood. Go on a weekday if you can. This is not a place that performs for cameras, which is exactly why it photographs well. The foxhunting culture is still genuinely alive here, and if you happen to cross paths with a hunt gathering on a cold morning, do not try to stage anything. Stand back. Let it happen. The photographs that come from that kind of restraint are the ones worth keeping.

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