EXPERIENCING THE LOWCOUNTRY
At Middleton Place Equestrian Center, horses and riders hit the trail — and somewhere along the hour, something changes.
Somewhere around the twenty-minute mark, Danielle Huntsman says, you can watch it happen. A rider who arrived at the barn stiff with nerves — staring at the reins, at her feet, at the ground — lifts her head. She stops looking at the horse and starts looking at where she is: live oaks, marsh, the Ashley River opening up on the far side of South Rice Pond. “They relax,” Huntsman says. “They start smiling and taking in where they are. By the time we come back into the barn, they’re usually beaming.”
Huntsman rode for the College of Charleston’s equestrian team, moved back to the Lowcountry after graduate school, and came to Middleton Place the way a lot of horse people come to a barn: looking for a stall. She stayed for the property and the people, and today she leases and co-owns the Equestrian Center with Chalmers Poston, running a boarding barn, quarterly schooling shows, and the public trail rides that have introduced a great many Lowcountry visitors — and more than a few locals — to the back of a horse.
The horses are the heart of it. About twenty-five make up the trail string, and nearly all of them are on a second or third career: former plow horses, upper-level dressage horses, Western reining horses, lesson ponies. What they have in common is temperament. “Horses are incredibly perceptive,” Huntsman says. “They can sense when a rider is nervous or unsure.” The job of a Middleton trail horse is to notice that and not mind. Henry is the in-house babysitter, so patient with the youngest riders that Huntsman says she wishes she could clone him. Gator, a former dressage horse, gives kisses in exchange for peppermints and has a fan club to show for it.
Fall is when the ride is at its best. The heat breaks, the humidity lifts, and the light along the river changes. The hour begins in the woods with views into the Middleton gardens, passes the Inn, and circles South Rice Pond along the Ashley, with a lead guide up front narrating the history of the place and a “caboose” guide at the back keeping an eye on every rider.
Alligators are a regular sighting; so are eagles and beavers. Not long ago a lead guide named Sophie spotted a roseate spoonbill standing in the river — “like a flamingo,” Huntsman says, “right in the middle of the Ashley.”
There have been proposals at the end of the trail, and Huntsman admits she can’t imagine a better place for one. But the moment she keeps coming back to is smaller: someone who was frightened to mount up an hour ago walking back into the paddock already asking when they can come again. A guest recently celebrated her eighty-fifth birthday on the trail. No experience is necessary. That, it turns out, is the whole idea.
Middleton Place Equestrian Center · 4280 Ashley River Road, Charleston · Trail rides $90 per person, about one hour · Ages 8 and up · Fall rides at 10 a.m., noon, 2 and 4 p.m. · Arrive 15–20 minutes early for helmet fitting; complimentary air vests available · Book ahead, especially weekends: middletontrailrides.com or 843-735-0709
