Seasonally Speaking

One of the many rewards of long-term residence in a single place, in this case the place being the easternmost end of Long Island, is a recurring opportunity to engage with the seasonality of things.

Seasons here begin and end and each has its apogee and its perigee, and so a season when one may think that the present one (say, perhaps, winter) may never end and the much desired spring, may never actually arrive.

Seasons teach many lessons, and many of those lessons are learned only with the passage of time, that friend and foe by which we measure so many things.

The closer one lives in relation to one’s environment, the more meaningful the seasons become; the more available, and important, the lessons.

A good, if minor, example of such may be found in two bits of knowledge gleaned by many repetitions through the years here at Local Links.

When not otherwise engaged with the game itself, (so few the fortunate for whom the game provides both work and leisure), we found ourselves still connected to the rich soil of The Hamptons, and would in spring’s earliest stirrings be moved to begin again a garden. Not the ambitious and admirable handiwork of a dedicated gardener, mind you, but a more appropriately amateurish attempt at enlivening one’s landscape in a somewhat more modest and easily accomplished way. Nothing says spring quite like the riot of color provided by a flat of pansies from a local greenhouse.

But it is wise in matters horticultural to heed the time taught wisdom of the multigenerational local farmer, who advises that we “plant nothing prior to Mother’s Day,” eager as we may be.

And it was with a similar eagerness for things not quite yet ready that one could find me seasonally standing, always to be somewhat mildly disappointed, at the nearby organic farmstand, hopeful for the first of one of the Hamptons’ most anticipated summer offerings, the local tomato. I repeated this premature search so regularly and for so many seasons that the charming women who ran the farmstand would glean a certain look in my eye, and without my even asking, gently say, “Not yet Robert, maybe in a week or two.” And so I waited.

And waiting is what most, if not all, local golfers are doing at this time of year, when the equinox has come and gone, when whoever is responsible for such things has declared it now time for something called Daylight Saving Time, and the Golf Digest calendar that came with our annual subscription renewal, shows us a photograph of “Golden Bell,” no. 12 at Augusta National, now, as seemingly always, in full bloom.

But little at all, save for the indefatigable daffodils have bloomed locally, and dormancy continues to rule the Bent, the rye, and the native grasses of the East End’s golf courses.

And so we wait. And if we wait wisely, we wait not only in eagerness, we wait also in readiness, with a certain willingness, and of course always, with a golfer’s constant companion, optimism.

Optimism is so much a defining characteristic of the local golfer one might think Alexander Pope was thinking not of all things man, but specifically of the 18th century duffer when he remarked: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”

We are convinced here that all who sit indoors gripping and re-gripping a favorite seven iron, conducting an annual reacquaintance ritual with a favored club, as well as those who find themselves making, slow, smooth, and effortless, albeit club-less practice swings in an office, or perhaps even in the kitchen, hold in their hearts the notion that this, this will be the season … And here you may fill in any aspiration to which you dare give a silent inner voice: “This will be the year I break 100, or 90, or 80. This will be the year I birdie number 7, or never three putt or fix my slice or hit better bunker shots or …” and on and on for golf is nothing if not an endless series of infinite challenges and who are we if not noble modern Quixotes carrying not swords but modern niblicks, accompanied not by Sancho Panzas but by equally dedicated and clearer minded loopers, witnesses to and partners in our madness, our recurring seasonal jousting with golf’s many windmills.

Unlike Cervantes, who in Quixote offers many lessons, Local Links has a longstanding commitment to distance itself from the dispensing of advice, believing as we do that: “you might not want to take someone else’s medicine, as it might make you sick.”

Additionally, we try not to report on tour results, that type of information being available everywhere. And as for personal perspective on players’ private lives, that is, sadly, about as ubiquitous and as valuable as the advice that does not apply to you or the game you play.

Here at Local Links we preferred to ruminate, to ponder, to take the kind of time with our thoughts as the game itself affords each of us every time we tee it up, if we will only open ourselves to it.

And so I played nine holes of golf yesterday in the company of one of my favorite people.

The temperature lingered in the mid 40s and the winds blew steadily at 15 mph, with occasional gusts approaching 25. Our willingness to begin was rewarded with slightly improving conditions as the afternoon progressed.

The course was completely deserted save for our presence, and that of the overhead circling of an occasional hawk, apparently engaged in the ceaseless pursuit of survival.

The sound of the wind was such that when we spoke, it was necessary to face one another, if there was to be any chance of being heard, let alone understood.

As we approached what would be our final tee shots of the day, we were greeted by the joyful bounding of two beautiful golden retrievers, freely roaming the vast acreage of the late winter landscape, the now four of us hundreds of yards from two bundled-up humans, sunlit silhouettes, walking together in the distance.

It was not until we had both hit our approach shots onto the par five’s green, that my companion glanced at his watch and remarked to me: “Two hours. Not bad at all.” And it indeed was not.

And the fact is that the whole of our golfing activity could have been accomplished in an hour and a half.

But upon reflection, I saw that we had at multiple moments, paused, and spoken of a hundred things: things as frivolous as pie, things as grave as death.

We had paused on greens, in fairways, and near bunkers. We had paused in the wind and in the cold. We had paused in places and for lengths of time that had the weather been milder, or had there been other people on the course, we would have been unable to pause just so.

Ours had been the rewards of a certain madness, married as it is to a bit of hardy determination. Where others were content to sit and perhaps judge a bit suspiciously, we had simply suited up and shown up.

We came to the day, and the day came to us.

And we came away our individual and shared experiences enhanced, our spirits invigorated, and our appreciation of the game affirmed.

Golf is indeed life, and life knows no weather.

Hit it close, putt once.