Saga of a Disc Golf Course Restructure - Part 3

Learning that we needed to find yet an additional two replacement holes for the disc golf course, when after hours of searching, we’d only been able to find one suitable one, Aaron and I were feeling a bit overwhelmed. One of the additional holes was hole 4, the one open field shot of the course, which admittedly is a dangerous hole, since the field is often used by other people, including parents with small children. We also were being pressured to take out hole 9, largely because the green area of the hole was a steep slope that had eroded over the years. Apparently it used to have ferns growing on the hillside until some renegade golfer took it upon himself to weed whack all the ferns away. All I know is that by the time I started playing Terrace, the hillside was bare.

After we’d found out that the grand plan was to remove six holes, we didn’t hear much more news on the subject. Then one Saturday morning while I was lounging in pajamas and playing video games, I got a phone call from Aaron. He said that he’d just gotten a call from Lowell, and that he was meeting with Ken from the parks department in about half an hour. It should be noted that Lowell is chronically bad about communicating important news ahead of time. So, shaken out of my comfortable relaxation, I pulled on some clothes and headed north to meet with Aaron, Lowell, and Ken.

Ken had basically called us in to give us a heads up that there would be a meeting with the environmental committee of the city in a couple weeks, and that they were the ones in charge of approving any replacement holes. He informed us that we should draw up several different proposed layouts to present to the city, and that hopefully we could either have one of the layouts approved, or mix and match layouts to give us a full eighteen holes. He also informed us that things would be happening soon with the construction projects. The dog park just had one final government approval to be processed and they would be ready to begin construction. This was in January, and he estimated that construction there would begin in about two months. The retention pond project, he also believed would be started soon, though he had no definitive date other than “this year.”

We informed Ken of the difficulty we were having finding suitable replacements, especially ones that would keep the course connected with proper flow. Fortunately, Ken probably knows the layout of the park and its boundaries better than anyone else. Looking at maps of the park, we saw a huge chunk of land that we’d neglected in our explorations before. Judging from the maps, there was plenty of space for us to work with, and even better, it was in an unused section of the park–no other park users to conflict with. It looked like it could be a perfect solution. So set with an impending deadline and an optimistic revelation, we knew our mission and agreed to meet at the park the next day to do some more exploring.