REQUISITOS GENERALES DE UN SISTEMA DE ILUMINACIÓN 1 Reconocimiento del sitio y objetos a iluminar:

From 10am Members begin gathering at the meet, preparing horses, greeting friends and discussing the day ahead. A round o f drinks is provided (mulled wine). The Master says a few words o f thanks, briefs the “field” on the general direction and reminds them o f the rules and whose instructions they are to follow during the day. At 11:15 am the “o f f ’ is sounded on a horn and the Huntsman then leads the hounds to draw the first covert. The mounted field is led off on top o f the ridge by the Master while those walking stroll along behind chatting in small groups. From P i, at the top o f a ferny slope overlooking the Beaulieu River valley our group o f foot followers is able to watch the action unfold. The hounds are run through the covert - gorse, bracken and small trees - on the slope where they attempt to pick up a scent. The Whippers-in ride wide on either side keeping the hounds moving in the right direction. At the far end o f the valley the hounds disappear briefly behind a fold in the landscape, and then reappear, glimpsed through the birches and alder that hide the river. One member o f the group comments that the hounds are “showing good form”, and they watch in silence for a while. Though the day is cold, there is a breeze - so this is not an ideal “scenting day”. Everyone hopes that they find a line while in such a good viewing position but it is not to be. The huntsman calls the hounds together again before disappearing into Tarrant’s Copse. The group sets o ff across the boggy valley, watching the mounted field pass in front o f them. Crossing a fence they stand and chat (P2) to another observer under the line o f large oaks that mark the boundary o f Tarrant’s Copse. The sound o f baying filters through the trees and they speculate whether the huntsman will go up on Roundeye hill in Ipley Inclosure. “It depends which way the fox goes. I think it will probably stay in the denser cover lower dovm - across into N ew Copse” .

Following the judgement o f the most knowledgeable present, the group makes their way round the deer-fenced fields o f Ipley Manor, to the gate into N ew Copse (P3). Suddenly the baying o f the hounds gets very loud, the note and timbre changes.

Listen, they’re speaking. T hey’ve got a strong line there. N o - not so sure now... there, picked it up again. Oh, h e’s leading them a merry chase.

Listening intently the group comments on what they think is happening in the Inclosure. Three hounds appear briefly and bound off into the woods again. As the “music” o f the hounds fades towards the south, the group walks down the edge o f the woodland. In the comer (P4) one o f the Whippers-in, looking very hot and sweaty, is resting his horse. After a short conversation finding out what happened in the woods, he is intermpted by a loud voice on the radio “Hounds crossing road, unguarded, near Ipley Manor. Heading towards Beaulieu Road. Repeat. Hounds....” . In a m sh he mounts up and gallops off.

The group, walking fast across Dibden Bottom heath, attempt to catch up but do not see the hounds again for nearly two hours. At King’s Hat Inclosure (P5), they greet some more friends in cars, say goodbye to others who are heading home and take stock o f where to go next. A quiet word is had with people who have radios, before some squeeze into a car for a short lift to North Gate car park, while others walk. With the Hounds in view again, the next section (Pô - P?) proves to be a reprise o f Beaulieu valley “cast"^"^”. This time the hounds are tired and the excited ‘yips’ that characterised moving off from the meet have disappeared. “H e’s [the Huntsman] got them moving very well indeed now”, said someone. “They’re concentrating on the job - look at them flow over the valley”. When the hounds are hidden again by Ferny Crofts woodland, they soon begin to speak again, and this time they have a strong line. The full choms o f bass, alto and treble hounds can be heard carried by the wind towards the group, but no one is sure in which direction they are moving.

Eventually the lead hounds are glimpsed, and almost immediately a fox is spotted, moving rapidly back up the valley from cover to cover towards the group. “Look at him go. H e’s throwing them off the scent by all that weaving. Sly devil. H e’s not worried at all.” “No, look they’re on to him again”. The fox bounds smoothly up the slope curving away in front o f the group and flying into the trees and bushes at the edge o f the field. The hounds are about 30 seconds behind the fox, and crash into the fence, struggling to squeeze a way through. The fox circles the field in the hedgerow and plunges into a gully densely packed with gorse. The watchers and the hounds lose

Sending the hounds in a circular route in an attempt to pick up a scent, particularly after a ‘check’, when the hounds have crossed the path o f a fox but are unsure in which direction it is moving.

sight and scent o f the fox. The hounds are confused, check and split into groups unable to pick up a strong scent again. On this occasion the fox evades the hounds and escapes. It is not long afterwards with the sun low in the horizon that the ‘gone hom e’ is sounded. Packed into a steamy landrover, wet-clothed and leaden-legged, the group is dropped back at Yew Tree car park to pick up their own cars.

H ow to ‘b e ’ in th e co u n tr y sid e

Although the basic dynamics and structure o f a day’s foxhunting are repeatable and patterned, each day is discussed by the members in terms o f its good and bad points. Some days are considered better than others. A few are exceptional. The Hunt described above was considered remarkable for the close sighting o f the fox at the end o f the day. Explanations o f memorable hunts, reminiscences o f particularly good days and comparisons with previous meets makes up a significant proportion o f member’s conversations and comments about what is going on during a day’s hunting. The intersection o f memory and sensate landscape provides a powerful gestalt experience, albeit unremarked and unremarkable for those taking part. Conversations, together with the places in which they happen, give a vivid, passionate and personal measure o f what makes an ideal hunting experience. W hen linked to specialist language - hunting terms and modes o f expression - these amount to a rehearsal o f identity and relationship with the landscape.

A ‘good’ day can mean a large variety o f things to the members. Contrary to the picture Phelps et al (1997) paints, the members I spoke with did not mention long fast gallops across the countryside with exciting jumps in close pursuit o f the fox and hounds. This particular ‘ideal’ is an occasionally mentioned tradition more prevalent in hunting iconography"^^ than it is in NFF members’ conversations"^^. For many it is

In two o f the homes I visited to interview (be interviewed by) Hunt officials, the rooms and hallways were festooned with mounted fox masks and oil-paintings o f hunting scenes. A common theme in these paintings (also found in many pubs) was o f the hounds in ‘full cry’ behind a fox with the mounted field follow ing at furious pace. In one home a humorous painting was explained as showing all that could go wrong during a hunt; with the horses overtaking the hounds, som e galloping across ploughed fields, the pack split and going in two directions and the fox escaping by doubling back across the field.

simply about being outdoors, in good weather and moving over the countryside in relationship to certain animals and birds.

I love it out here. I mean its great if the sun is shining, but I almost prefer it when it is cold. Y ou know, those frosty days.... [Long pause while w e watched the Huntsman across the valley send the hounds o ff in a new direction]. And even when it’s raining and the view disappears in a haze. It gives me time to really see things, to slow down and notice all the life around me.

(Hunt member, N ovem ber 1999)

For others it is about the riding and the chance for cross country “brushing” - galloping yes, but also the challenge in safely negotiating ditches, rivers and fences. Several stated that they came specifically to watch the hounds work - for them a thing o f almost aesthetic beauty. But most commented on enjoying the contest between the hounds and the fox, finding excitement in the race to outwit the hounds and the Huntsman’s attempts to guide the hounds. On the other hand, it would be incorrect to suggest that all conversations and comments are about aspects o f hunting. Like any group o f people who meet through a mutual interest, there is a great deal o f sociality that is not o f this nature and much more mundane.

The Hunt throws people into proximate and engaged relationships with the landscape. Looking at plants and trees, walking across muddy plains and around obstacles like farmhouses and rivers. Discussing what they would do next if they were the Huntsman, “I’d call them back and draw the wood again”, and listening to the sounds the hounds are making, “They’re not so sure now - I think they lost the scent again” creates a sense o f becoming one with the landscape. The ordered and ritual aspects of hunting serve as an emotional entrée, a structure through time and space, that readies and heightens the experience o f being in the countryside. During a hunt one knows generally where you are going - but you never really know. The rhythm is dictated by the presence and absence o f fox and hounds (Marvin 2000a: 110) which may well set off in unexpected directions. There is excitement, and a ‘natural’ unfolding o f the landscape.

This might suggest that each Hunt develops nuances o f experience that might reflect their ‘country’ W hile som e, in an open country, might stress a fast exciting gallop behind the hounds, in the smaller more densely w ooded spaces o f the N ew Forest, that aspect declines in importance.

speaking o f the English countryside as a “performance space” waiting to have a hunting event inscribed on it, Marvin comments on how human participants are required to have

acute awareness o f the surroundings, a bodily engagem ent with it, and an absorption into it. ( ) The physicality o f the landscape: the w oods, streams, hedges, slopes, open spaces becom e objects o f intense interest because o f the potential drama that they offer ( .. .) as sites o f encounter for hounds and foxes....

(2000a: 110)

He goes on to describe how elements o f wind and weather, the actions o f wild and domestic birds and animals, are considered and mapped by participants as indicators o f the progress o f the hunt. Hence the landscape is read and becomes “transformed through the intensity o f engagement with it and in it” {pp cit.) Through the principle performers, the hunt “ebbs and flows through the landscape spaces, gaining or losing intensity,” according to the proximity and configurations o f the fox and hounds. And, we might add, this pattern o f presence and absence varies according to the physical position, expertise, role and plain good luck o f the participants. While riders might get a broader picture o f how the hunt connects up spaces, walkers tend to be in better positions to view details o f the unfolding relationship between huntsman, fox and hounds. To use Ingold’s phrase, learning to become a member o f the Hunt is an “education o f attention” : The Hunt takes on meaning in the “context o f engagement with the environment” (1996:40)

A principle tension in the relationship to the landscape is between obscurity and visibility. The landscape that envelopes them also hides things from them; nature keeps its own secrets. The ebb and flow o f the hunt is a process o f hiding and revealing, a challenge to human interpretation and understanding: both other and ‘us’. For the hunt members it is the relationship between fox and hounds that structures their wider understanding o f embeddedness in rural spaces. The fox, as principle performer, is more often absent than present.

The fox is always there as potential or possibility, but it must be conjured out o f the landscape. But this non-presence is not a void, it is not empty o f significance, it is full o f fox-ness, but is incomplete.

(M arvin2000a: 111)

For the hunt members the countryside is full o f potential foxes, present, moving around in the process o f living their lives and for the most part invisible in the

landscape. The fox becomes representative o f all other animals and birds that move around and “bring the landscape to life”- a signifier and access point into ‘nature’. Engaging with this hidden nature requires learning and imagination. Observers try and imagine the paths and tracks o f birds and animals, but chiefly foxes, flowing through the variable rural spaces. Areas o f land become coverts - spaces o f invisibility, which are judged for their potential as a place where foxes might choose to be. Coverts, areas that cover and hide - trees, gorse bushes, long grasses, banks - form shapes and spaces in the landscape which are subject to interpretation. How do they link up? How should we send the hounds through them? Observers learn to judge the success o f their imaginary traces o f foxes through past experience, interpretation o f weather patterns, listening and watching when and where birds are disturbed. But chiefly they rely on the hounds to make this hidden (and imaginary) world visible.

Foxes always leave a scent, an olfactory presence that slowly or quickly dissipates, invisible evidence o f their choices and movements in the landscape. They leave histories o f movement, lines in the landscape that hounds follow, ignoring all the other smells, other histories. When the scent is old the hounds will have their heads lowered, smelling tussocks or fronds for the remnant evidence o f a fox’s passing. As they get closer to the fox the strength o f scent allows them to lift their heads and follow the evidence in the air itself. In essence, it is the behaviour o f the hounds that are read for confirmation o f human attempts to pierce the invisibility o f rural spaces. Yet this olfactory presence is itself only interpreted through another sensory remove. Scent lines are beyond human sensory capabilities, but hounds are watched for indications o f finding a scent line. But, as they are often hidden in a covert, it is aural evidence that indicates for the observers when a scent line is found. The ‘speaking’ o f the hounds, intently listened to and carefully judged, indicates, through overall volume and aesthetic sound, the progress o f the hunt. It is in the nuances o f their baying and belling that evidence o f the fox’s movement is interpreted. Hence engagement with hidden natural worlds are primarily aural and imaginative.

This relationship has a structure through time in which the visibility and invisibility of fox and hounds, the connection o f the auditory, imaginative and physical landscape, and the raising and lowering o f levels o f excitement, combine to create a powerful sense o f engagement. Table 5 examines the visibility o f the hunt from the point of

view o f our foot-followers. It illustrates the significant proportion o f time that the hounds are out o f sight, hidden by folds in the landscape, trees, or simply sheer distance. It gives graphic expression to periods o f walking and standing still, of viewing and listening. While it is impossible to display the nuances o f the baying of hounds, a rough indication is given by the interpretation of volume. (This is not entirely satisfactory as the volume actually drops when the hounds are following a strong scent). At each of the points where the hounds were speaking the group listened intently and then discussed whether they judged a fox to be present or not. If it was judged to be a ‘good line’, therefore bringing the fox’s presence closer, the sense o f excitement increased. The sounds unfolded for them an imaginative landscape of evidence and the possibilities o f evidence, engaging emotions and landscape together. Visibility Index P 2 Meet PI P 2 P3 P 4 P5 C ar part< • pS--- Car park Key

F ollow ers w alking F o llo w ers In car H o u n d s in sig h t H o u n d s 'sp ea k in g ' F o x _ J In ca r home' Scale: 1km=2.25cm

Table 3: Visibility index and senses in time and space

Marvin points out that a hound that dashes into a wood, finds and kills a fox, has been efficacious, but it has not hunted. In order to have hunted the hound needs to have developed a proper engagement.

The transmission o f emotion through engagement and loss o f engagement is essential for the hunt to work as a dramatic event and it is the collective performance o f the hounds that