Wolf Creek
October 12, 2010
I’ve never been an avid golfer, nor have I ever been a particularly good golfer, but I do try to get out and play at least once a year. This year I was a little late getting started. My brother Wes, who has been working at Wolf Creek the last two years, took me out for my first round of the season on Saturday. I was pretty rusty and the west nine at the Wolf is very unforgiving, so it wasn’t long before I stopped pulling out the scorecard to mark down the embarrassing numbers and we were soon counting our success by the number of balls we lost and found.
But even though we both played absolutely awful, it was a lot of fun just having that one on one time with Wesley. We walked instead of taking a cart so it was good exercise too, and the weather could not have been better. I just love having time with Wes where we can talk and joke around and really connect over something we have in common.
I too used to work at the wolf. In grade 9 and 10 I spent the summers and many fall days after school at the golf course, picking the driving range and washing down golf carts. So being at Wolf Creek always takes me back so vividly to many memories from those times, some good and others not so much. It’s incredible how memories of things I’d completely forgotten about, from 13 years ago, can suddenly seem so clear after going back to the place where they happened and recognizing the little details, the smells, the sounds, and all the tiny things the brain leaves out when it fabricates a place in your mind from the limited materials of a distant memory. Even the wash bay behind the tee box on hole #1 where I’d washed hundreds and hundreds of carts, looked exactly as it did 13 years ago. The hose wrapped up and hung just like it always was, and the same garbage barrels in the same place. It was like going back in time.
So what does all this make me think about? Well, as cliche and predictable as it may be, it makes me feel like I’ve grown up a lot in the last 13 years. I no longer feel so easily intimidated and unsure of myself. Walking through the places where I’d let myself be bullied and teased, I now look back on it all with so much more understanding. I no longer feel I have anything to prove to anyone, and I realize also some of the reasons why my peers tortured me the way they did. I don’t feel any regret or animosity over those memories. Just an acceptance of it all as part of the journey that brought me to where I am now.
