Winter carnival season is upon us!

That is the Winter Equestrian Festival, a 12-week staycation for humans and equines in Wellington, Florida, just outside of West Palm Beach, northwest of Miami. That’s geography, but for us, it’s the dead-center of the horse world for three months or more, bookending the season—as some of us are wont to do—with November, December, sometimes April.

I also call it The Swamp. Because that’s what Florida is, or was, before massive land reclamation projects transformed it into the snow bird destination we know today. We are reminded of its natural history by the pungent smell of sulfur every time the sprinklers come on. We are reminded by the mosquitos and the alligators that come creeping out of the canals. 

“I want to see the Everglades before I leave Florida,” someone says to me. 

“Look right over there,” I respond, pointing to the ditch.

This past week enveloped us in a mighty chill. Well, “mighty” for Florida. Do we have shirts with long sleeves? We dig around in closets. The grooms are bundled up like Arctic Explorers. One professes a love of layers, so none of this bothers her. She peels herself like an onion as the day wears on.

On Wednesday, the first show day of the first show week, I head to the showgrounds to watch my two five-year-olds compete at a meter. I, too, am an onion; a fat one. I have a sweater over a sweatshirt over another shirt. I grab a hat and a scarf and mittens. I forget shoes and arrive at the show in my fake-woolen slippers.

Parking my golf cart, I shuffle along, heading to the IC. That’s short for ‘International Club,’ which is long for ‘the VIP tent,’ where we fancy owners hang out. I am intercepted by the Columbian rider Roberto Teran, a member of my Major League Show Jumping Team this past 2024 season. 

“You must give me a hug,” he says. 

This is not something I am at all reluctant to do. For him, it is like hugging an over-stuffed carnival prize. For me, it is like hugging a tall, suave, country gentleman.

It was just last week, during WEF Premiere, that I spotted top-ten rider Richard Vogel stopped in front of the buffet. He was ringed by five or six men, lost in conversation, indifferent to having become an obstacle in my pursuit of lunch. In Aachen, Germany last summer, I waited outside the ring after one of his innumerable wins to get a hat autographed.

I had to wait a long time. Now, I don’t know where the hat is. 

After my hat was signed, I decided he was cute.

 “He’s cute,” I said to my companion over lunch one day. 

“He’s not,” she says. 

“No, he is cute,” says the man with us, middle-aged and married with two kids. His is the objective opinion, and so I win the debate. But all this was before he blocked my access to the fajita bar.

The week continued cold, cold, cold. On the other side of the country, wildfires burn. A sadness hangs over everything and we pray for the safety of so many, and to ease the hearts of those who have lost so much.

By Saturday, just in time for the Saturday Night Lights Grand Prix, the weather has warmed up slightly. Not that it matters in the IC, where the crowd provides as much warmth as a roaring fire. 

That and the flowing spirits. We are given a summery bottle of wine decorated with flowers gratuit and a small but abundantly provided charcuterie board. There are three types of cheese! 

I order a whiskey neat. I always order a whiskey neat and I never get a whiskey neat because it is against IC policy. Whiskey MUST be diluted. And not just by an ice cube or two—it is brought to me so dilute the pale yellow color resembles the urine of an aggressively hydrated person. I don’t complain and drink up!

A man approaches our table. This man has nearly two hundred young horses in Europe. I imagine he is very rich and wonder if he is single. Before he leaves, I sell him one of the 20 horses I have in Europe. Now I have 19, and he is one horse closer to two hundred.

The man next to me informs me that I have far too few young horses in Europe. I agree with him, because I would like to have ALL the horses in Europe, and everywhere else, but as far as breeding strategy, I suggest quality is superior to quantity. 

“I used to believe in quality over quantity,” he says, “but that didn’t work, so now I breed quantity.” 

Doesn’t that probably just mean, I think to myself, that now you simply have a larger quantity of what doesn’t work? I don’t say this out loud.

After the class, I am sucked into the darkness that has settled around Wellington outside of the bright lights of the International Ring. Someone’s sprinklers are on, and I smell the swampish miasma. I love the sudden solitude that the darkness and the empty streets bring. The canals are flat silver ribbons reflecting the light of the moon.  

The season has begun!