The wind
has come when I arrive at Mike Hester’s Foxwood Plantation and County Line Kennel in Mebane, North Carolina. With it came the bite of late fall’s damp and the promise of a night’s first freeze. Tree limbs rattle, still shimmering with leaves announcing the glories of fall in auburn, red, and yellow. Standing with Hester, discussing the coming frost at the edge of a garden bursting with okra and eggplants, I am struck by how removed much of my life is from the rhythms of the earth, and how very connected Hester’s is to the same.
There are things in this world so elemental as to be invisible to the main of us, things not recognized on short timelines. They require permanence, intention, a forethought anathema to most of us in our disposable, drive-through world. They are found rooted in soil, deep in the woods that remain, or following their noses through lespedeza and sorghum to lock up at point, tails vibrating with purpose. Such things are the province of Mike Hester. It’s been this way since he was twelve years old.
Mike Hester is a dog man. Raising and training quail dogs with his County Line Kennel is far from all he does, but it is his central passion. From it spring his hunting preserve, his land
