January 13, 2026 
It descends with a flurry of activity: Winter Equestrian Festival season, edition 2026.
The flurry started months ago. The season has been this big, sparkling, glittering destination in time, sucking us all inexorably toward it. A sucking like a wind tunnel, only perhaps a wind tunnel is more of a pushing that you stand against. Testing your aerodynamics.
We are not testing aerodynamics, we give in to the pull. We want to arrive.
Back in my home state of Minnesota, we had a sports stadium called the Metrodome, a huge puffed-up white-fabric-roofed building that housed our national football and baseball teams. The best part of the whole thing was leaving at the end of a game, when the pressure in the building that held up the roof pushed you bodily out with a tremendous gust of air.
That’s what it’s like, ending up here, now, in season.
And as soon as we hit it, we are careening through it as if we’ve hit a patch of ice on a steep slope and we slide, with ever-increasing speed, through the weeks and months.
In Minnesota, we’ve always dealt with ice, but ice in lowercase, not all caps. Not ICE.
It weighs on me, recent events. I feel like there’s a sizable stone in my chest.
But if anyone knows how to deal with ICE, isn’t it Minnesotans? I ask myself, wanting to stretch the metaphor, use it to comfort myself. Can we salt them, like we do our driveways?
A mere week ago, I got my lips injected. It was my third time. I intended to write about this last year—I wanted to brag about embracing the West Palm Beach style. The first time, I felt I had done something truly outrageous, crossed a line. My brother said, “I didn’t think you were the type.” I am, indeed, the type. It’s simply that, in terms of resource allocation, I know the greatest bang for my buck will not come in augmenting my physical appearance—for what? There are vet bills to be paid.
I got little result from that first foray, I went back and asked for a “whole syringe.”
This time, a whole syringe got me lips that looked like the Metrodome before that snow storm overburdened the roof and collapsed it. Assuming I was old-hand at the procedure, the technician wielded the syringe like a sword and puffed me up beyond all measure. I limped away, swollen and bruised.
I didn’t limp. In fact, I walked normally and stopped thinking about my lips. Instead of hiding until the swelling passed, I gallivanted around the stable, chatting with everyone and then held an event for 40 people in which I talked in front of all of them, barely even considering the clown-like appearance of my face.
This is because the event was on the topic of “self-sabotage” and I was determined to overcome all hesitation in order not to be accused of that thing. Imagine a fool, 30 minutes west of Palm Beach, reaching for “Mar-a-Lago face,” achieving it for 48 hours (after that, the swelling had passed), and then skittering like a mouse into her hole rather than having Christopher Anderson take her photo closeup, like the way it’s supposed to be done.
I did hold my hand up when I saw someone filming. Hand up, palm forward, just a moment, and then the hand dove to cover my lips, my Michelin-man lips.
By the time Saturday night rolled around, I looked almost normal. (Or did I? Who’s to say?) I dressed all in black, like I nearly always do, and headed to the showgrounds.
We live in a new world now. Now, every week holds one, two, three, four 5* shows. This week, we have two 5* in the Middle East and one in Switzerland. The way riders are distributed, it’s like ordering a donut with sprinkles but only getting one or two of the sprinkles drowning in frosting.
I hate frosting. It’s too sweet, I’ve grown too old.
This is why we need a 6* donut, people say.
Here in Wellington, we have a 3* to get our season started. The crowd filled the stands and VIP and the arenas with their parked cars and golf carts. Attendance was not an issue.
For me, Saturday Night Lights are indeed that—the interplay between the light and the darkness. By the time 7pm has rolled around, the Swamp (as I call our land down here) is blanketed in darkness. The showgrounds glow with their bright, artificial light. You park in darkness and follow the light, as if you are a ball rolling down a hill toward the bright glow, laying at the bottom.
I was walking toward the warmup. People lined up against the fence, watching. From a distance I saw the backs of them, and every few moments a horse soared above, visible briefly above the people, their heads, the fence, before disappearing out of sight.
I felt a thrill of delight watching it. I wanted to hold the moment right where it was. Me, in the darkness, outside the pool of light. Them, the crowd, watching. The horses, beautiful, powerful, a remnant of some other world, some other time, when this was not just a sport but a method of survival. In that moment, I felt like I was exactly where I wanted to be, only I wanted to be invisible and I wanted time to stop so I could feel only and exactly this now and forever.
