January is the time of year on Cape Cod when we really start to doubt some of our life choices. A couple of different decisions and I would be living in a place where the temperature rarely falls below 50 degrees, and there’s no such thing as ice. Instead, I pick my way across the sidewalk or through snow-dusted trails, trying not to be the next in line at urgent care. One solution: The hound and I hit the golf course, with its wide swath of walkable turf.
In the off season, several of the two-dozen or so public courses seem to tolerate hikers, even those, like me, accompanied by a curious hound. But, take note, some golfers are out year-round. And some courses border on hunting areas. Take precautions. I usually aim for the window between the end of deer season on Dec. 31 and the start of golf season in April when the flags reappear on the greens. And the hound and I wear orange.
But in those wintery three or four months, the town course belongs to us and a few other hardy souls who walk the sweep of fairways and the twisting cart paths. The hound and I avoid the greens and sandtraps and always, always pick up poop. We don’t want to ruin this for all of us.
To be clear, I’m not naive about golf courses and the effect of fertilizers and other chemicals on groundwater. Would we have been better off leaving those 150 acres as untouched open space? Probably. And while I appreciate the trade-offs of the income and jobs that golf courses produce for the Cape, I think we have enough of them, thanks. But the courses are here, so I like the idea that they can be available to everyone, not just golfers, assuming we are respectful.
And if you’re not burdened with clubs, the winter is a great time to take advantage of these big open spaces. Walking all 18 holes can take you 4 miles or so.
It’s easy to imagine that in winter, the courses are dead. But the hound’s nose tells him there is plenty going on. Even I see proof of it. A deer in the distance. Coyote scat. A hawk swooping through the trees. Turkeys. By early spring, the resident blue heron will stalk the edge of the pond. I wonder if he dreads the busy summer and dodging golf balls.
And of course the greenskeepers have not deserted their posts. There are trees marked for cutting and on a clear day, you can hear the sound of saws or brush cutters, gussying things up for the summer. Someone limbs the trees and picks up the branches piled on the edge of the rough. The fairways are spotless – no leaves. We find occasional flotsam and jetsam from the summer – broken tees, discarded pencils, a cigar butt, plastic cups. What we don’t usually find, oddly, are golf balls, not even in the woods at the edge of the fairways. Do the greenskeepers go through the course with a fine-toothed comb? Are their gleaners who pick them up? Do the coyotes take them?
Perhaps one reason I like walking the course is its familiarity, particularly the scent of the turf that rises even in the cold. I grew up in a golfing family where we spent a lot of time either playing or talking about the game. Endlessly talking about it. I wasn’t a bad golfer but I never had the temperament for a game where the slightest adjustment in your grip affected whether the ball was straight and true or a sliced disaster. But growing up in the city, it was one of the few ways to be around greenspace and nature. I liked the congeniality and the outdoor part, even in the heat of an Ohio summer. I just didn’t enjoy all that incessant detail and adjusting and obsessing and discussing that went along with it.
My favorite time on local courses is when it snows and the course is no longer recognizable as a golf course. I get out the cross country skis, and the hound and I take off, sliding across a fairway and coasting down a gentle slope. There’s the occasional animal track – bunnies and foxes mostly, I think. Sometimes there’s another set of ski tracks. Other days we break the trail, grateful for the broken trail on the way back. The sunshine is warm off the snow, and I peel off a layer and think, it’s not so bad to be on Cape Cod in January. I’m on familiar territory only 10 minutes from my house, enjoying a moment where anything could happen. A bit like golf.
