Golf lessons

I am starting to get overly-stressed in handling the details of my upcoming move to the Virgin Islands. I had the pleasure of taking a break from this stress and joining my dear friend, Bob, for an afternoon of golf at Birdwood yesterday (a cool, but beautifully sunny day). This always creates great amusement as I am terrible at the game and Bob is new to the game. I have to have a little "counter" to help keep track of my shots, since I take so darn many. Just slide one bead along the string for each stroke. Once the beads run out (10 strokes), I consider the hole over. On one hole, I gave up trying to hit the ball past a little ravine and found that throwing it proved to be a much more effective strategy...

There was great amusement when we realized that we had gotten off course and had no idea that we were playing on the wrong holes. Shall I mention that it took us 3 holes to figure this out?

"Okay, it's 235 yards to the pin."

"That doesn't look like more than 2 football fields. In fact, it looks like less than one."

"Hmm... It does look short. But, that's what the scorecard says. Maybe they are counting the hills. Maybe they moved the pin. Maybe I'm not a good judge of distance."

Oh no, my dear. You're just on hole 12, not 3! :) Ugh. I hate fueling the stereotype that women don't know how to read maps...

I absolutely love the scenery at Birdwood. It is a beautiful place (as you can see in the picture above) and if you ever get a chance, you should check it out. I would be happy to just sit by the driving range for hours, especially on a spring day. The view of the mountains is spectacular and there is a nice variety of beautiful trees around the grounds. My long-time dream has been to have a nice plot of land with room for a horse and a house of my design. I planned to have weeping willows, and now I know for sure that I must, for it is a most romantic tree. After losing 4 golf balls into a lake and running out of my counting beads on the real hole 3, I decided to perch against the trunk of a weeping willow tree near the green and let Bob finish out the hole. It was so peaceful to rest there on that cool Fall day, with the wind gently brushing the long thin branches into one another and making the most soothing rustling sound. I noticed that the movement of the branches mimicked the wisps of my hair that had fallen out of my braid. Instead of pushing them back, I let them be and enjoyed the serenity of the moment as they tickled my face. I guess that one could draw a lot of lessons from this simple occasion, but here's the one I will go with: sometimes adversity can lead us to a beautiful place. If I didn't lose those golf balls and play so poorly on that hole, I never would have thought to sit down under my weeping willow. I hate to think that I could have missed that moment.