By Christina Kennedy

I first met Leslie Tolles on the trails around Aunt Park Lane on a brisk morning in the fall of 1977.

She was riding her Morgan gelding Hi-Vale Mr. Ben and I was on the first horse I ever bought in Newtown, a big bay named Pegasus. Leslie had just moved to Newtown because it was known to be horse-friendly, and Aunt Park Lane, in particular, was right off the trail system.

Later, Leslie would say to me, “I asked my realtor for a property where you could just walk out of your driveway and head for the woods ...” My husband and I had done the same one year before. Eventually, when all the horse people on that road met and took a count, we found out that there were 19 horses kept on that short road.

In those days, the trails and open space were so abundant that Newtown could support an accredited Fox Hunting Club, the Fairfield County Hounds. The encroachment of houses on the trails has since long forced the FCH to move to Bridgewater, where, apparently, the local legislators are less tolerant of indiscriminate building.

We were all young, busy raising our children, making a living, commuting, participating in the local PTA and Band Parents Association. None of us was wealthy and many of us held a second job in order to indulge our passion with horses, which was not a cheap sport.

Leslie, who was and is an art teacher, was already honing her extraordinary skills in painting and animal portraiture. Peter Concilio, also a school teacher, was doing gigs playing the bass with a jazz group. And I, involved in law enforcement, often times worked in a seedy bar as a bartender while Lorraine Lordi, a bio-chemist, imported crystal-ware from Europe.

How we found the time to take care of our horses and even ride and compete in shows, can only be attributed to our love for horses and the energy of youth.

The Aunt Park Lane group met every Sunday for rides, followed by brunches, and wine and conviviality. In the spring of 1978, the idea was born to form a trail organization for the purpose of mapping the trails and securing a firmer landowners permission to ride, rather than a word or a handshake.

The three initial organizers, Leslie, Lorraine Lordi and myself held a first meeting at Leslie’s house, inviting the other horse owners of Aunt Park Lane to attend. We knew that every club has to have officers so we immediately elected Peter as president (mainly because he was the only one not present at that meeting and, thus, could not protest).

We dispensed with the position of treasurer as we had no money yet. I was the secretary and took notes, Leslie later designed the logo which is still the enduring symbol of the NBLA, and Lorraine said that she would be the chairman because she had never been chairman of anything in her life and it sounded good.

We were running out of people, so we stopped there.

We called the organization the Newtown Bridle Lands and started thinking that we had to have an organized activity to attract more members, so in October 1978 we held the very first hunter pace, aptly named by Lorraine “Frost on the Pumpkin.”

None of us was quite sure what a hunter pace really was, nor how to run it, but we knew from the FCH people, who were routinely holding hunter paces, that we had to have a starting and an arrival point, obstacles to jump, a route to follow, and food at the end.

Lorraine had a large backyard, so it was decided to simply meet there, starting from and returning to her house. She also had chickens who could be kept inside chicken coops. Those chickens and their coops were recruited as jumps. If you wanted to start the pace you had to jump over those coops containing squawking chickens.

Then we rode into the Morgan Pond Preserve, jumped a few logs which by luck had fallen in strategic places, and returned to Lorraine’s house, where everybody had brought home-cooked food.

We had 11 teams that day, although the rules were quite relaxed, someone rode alone, and mostly the participants started riding when they felt like it. I cannot remember if we even had an official time to approximate, but we all won something, namely a bottle of wine to be shared with the company.

Given that we all had enjoyed that day very much, we had a second pace the following year, this time starting from the Concilio’s residence and still using the chicken coops (as we thought that they added a touch of class).

The day before that pace, Leslie, Lorraine, Jeannie Concilio and I prepared a large amount of Swedish meat balls for the post pace banquet. As the day progressed, and we were still rolling meat in our hand, we kept on adding wine, perhaps out of boredom or because we were distracted by talking and laughing. On the day of the pace, after eating our meatballs, I recall that people were leaving the party on horseback in quite a happy mood.

As the Pace was strictly local, many people simply rode their horses to the pace, then left them in a field on the homeowner’s property during the celebration. It was fortunate that there were no laws regarding DWI on horseback.

The NBLA has held its Frost on the Pumpkin pace every October since these humble beginnings.

Nowadays, the participants come from the tri-state area numbering in the hundreds, the food is catered by a fancy restaurant, there are time-keepers, stewards, real stadium jumps, and the course meanders through half of Newtown.

The NBLA is now a respected and valid voice in the town’s effort to preserve open space. Leslie’s logo – the silhouette of a horse’s head in a maroon field – is a well known symbol, the hallmark of the association, and visible in all things NBLA such as brochures, letterhead, saddle pads, sweat shirts, jackets.

And Leslie, my friend of so many years, is now a nationally renowned equine artist.

She was elected associate member of the American Academy of Equine Artists, which is based in Lexington, Kentucky. Her artwork has been featured throughout the country in juried shows and has been chosen for display at the Horse Expo in Sacramento, California, and at several other national equine shows.

Recently she won two awards at the New England Regional Colored Pencil Society show in Petersborough, New Hampshire.

Unfortunately, our home-grown artist will leave Newtown next year to relocate to North Carolina.

As a parting gift to the many friends she made through the years and for the cause of helping the NBLA in its effort to preserve open space, Leslie is inviting the public to her studio on Aunt Park Lane for a print signing and sale on December 10 from 1 to 4 pm.

The gallery fees from all sales will benefit the NBLA.

All of Leslie’s prints are signed, limited editions. The artist will remarque (personalize) the prints on that day at no extra cost. The public is cordially invited to attend the event, peruse and enjoy the fine collection of portraiture, which can be viewed in the intimacy of her home and studio.

Most of Leslie Hudson-Tolles’ art work is available for veiwing on her website at www.geocities.com/Tolholmes studio.

But this is not just the story of the birth and growth of a small town organization, it is in fact a story of people, of enduring friendships built on the love of horses, of time shared through the joys and pains and broken dreams of life.

Of the original founders of the NBLA, only Leslie and I remain in Newtown. Every one else has moved out or passed on. And now she is going too, and I feel like the Last of the Mohicans.

Soon, I too will move on. I’m looking with pleasure at the new and eager faces of this club, at the younger generation of horse enthusiasts who will fight the battles we once fought, who will carry the banner to keep some green pastures open before construction and housing devour what once was a rural community.

It is their turn now to use their energy and resources.

No one will jump over chicken coops anymore, but, thanks to the NBLA and the vision of a few people 27 years ago, our horses still ride on many of the same woods where we first rode then, while the leaves change color and fall, until spring comes again.