BlogGer: ​ABOUT Being

Richard Wilberg: Creativity Coach and Musician
  • Home
  • Coaching
  • Music
  • Photography
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact

What A Shame

3/17/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
​She bounded across the abandoned 36-hole, 400-acre golf course. I hadn’t expected an encounter on my October walk. She couldn’t be with the bank, could she? They foreclosed on the property ten months ago. Perhaps she was a guest at Loon Lake Lodge like me? Sam, the former owner, invited his lodge guests, adjacent lakeside condo owners, and the general public to walk on the golf course when players were absent. 

“Hi, gorgeous day,” she bubbled.
 
“What a shame,” I replied while I shook my head and gazed over her shoulder toward tufts of grey native grass that poked through the formerly well manicured, bent grass turf of fairway nine.
 
“It’s getting close to winter,” she opined. “It’ll look better in spring.”
 
“Maybe,” I replied. “When the bank foreclosed, they discontinued maintenance. It shows.”
 
She stepped closer. “Are you a golfer?”  
 
The air between us chilled as a cloud briefly blocked the sun. “Nope, dreams were lost here as well as jobs.”
 
“The land is going back to the way it was before the golf course,” she said through tightened lips. “And, not many jobs were lost. Are you from around here or a visitor?”
 
“Visitor.” I stepped back. “Are you with the bank?”  
 
“I’m the owner,” she smiled like the Cheshire Cat. I felt like the mouse.
 
I took another step back. “I didn’t know the property changed hands.”
 
“This is private property and you’re trespassing,” she hissed, thrusting her fingers beneath her belt as she moved another step closer.
 
“Well, I guess I should leave,” I said. “We stay at the lodge, and I often walk here. I didn’t know I was trespassing. This is a loss for me. Sam’s death ended 80 years of family ownership. People worked, played, and died here. Sam’s great grandparents, grandparents, father, mother, and other family members are buried in the family plot in the woods. Family pets have graves here too.”
 
She stared arrows into my back as I retraced my steps to the lodge. I found Christina in the office with her baby daughter, Eloise, and six-year-old son, Justin. Christina was Sam’s daughter, fourth generation Smith family. But for Sam’s death and the bank’s immediate foreclosure on Christmas-eve day, Justin and Eloise would have been fifth generation Smith family to manage the property.  
 
“Well, I met the new golf course owner,” I announced. “I’m not impressed with her hospitality.”  
 
“We found a buyer for the property after the bank foreclosed,” Christina lamented. “The woman you met swooped in with her offer to the bank on Sunday before we had a chance to present our proposal on Monday. What kind of a bank makes a deal on a Sunday? Maybe that’s why she won’t speak with me?”
 
“I’m frustrated,” Christina continued. “I sent an email asking if we could walk on her property. She used to walk on the course after Dad sold her a lot on the lake where she built a summer home. She lives out of state. I’m stung by the irony. All I want to do is take Justin for a walk on the golf course to the spooky woods, as he calls it. He often asks when we will see the scary tree roots that poke from the rocky hillside.”
 
“I was headed in that direction when she confronted me,” I replied as I remembered last year’s stroll and those roots that like looked like fingers ready to snatch little boys who ventured into the spooky woods.  I recalled the bog past the trees, one of many landforms created by the glacier that retreated 10,000 years ago.
 
Known as the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the glacier’s snowy grip covered Canada with fingers of ice that gripped North America as far as southern Wisconsin. Ice was a mile high here. The glacier gouged basins for future lakes and depressed the continent as it carried Artic boulders the size of automobiles to their final destination on what would eventually become the golf course where I met the new owner.
 
These boulders, too large to relocate, would determine the lay of the golf course, and become obstacles to achieve par game of golf.  As the glacier retreated, and the land rose without the weight of the ice, scoured basins filled with melt water. Rivers and redirected water would eventually fill Loon Lake depression and the bog in the spooky woods.
 
Was this the time the new owner visualized when she said she wanted the land to return to the way it was? Or did she think of a million years before the glacier, when Lake Superior basin was formed? Maybe she meant 4.5 billion years ago when volcanic basalt created the Precambrian Shield that ultimately folded to create the world’s third largest continental rift that collected water in an aquifer, to later quench the thirst of dinosaurs, and then mix with glacial melt water to fill Lake Superior basin, Loon Lake and the bog in the spooky woods?
 
Maybe she spoke of the time when our First Peoples migrated to the region after the retreat of the glacier? Known as the Woodland and Mississippian cultures, these early residents created effigy mounds that still rise across Wisconsin. Decedents of First Peoples include today’s Huron, Menominee, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Chippewa), Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) tribes, and more. They hunted and camped nearby, and probably drank cool, clear water from the bog in the spooky woods.
 
Neither dinosaurs, Woodland First Peoples, Mississippians, native tribes and bands of today, Sam’s guests, or local residents needed permission to walk on the abandoned golf course - until now. What a shame. 

If this essay is meaningful, please like or tweet below or leave a comment. Thank you for your interest and possible action you may take.
 
Richard Wilberg, MS, PLCC, ACC 
Coach for Personal Fulfillment and Career Success

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    About the Author

    Picture
    I write personal essays, creative non-fiction, flash fiction, and self-development articles from my home in  Madison, Wisconsin.

    Archives

    January 2022
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014

    Categories

    All
    Acceptance
    Aging
    Alternatives
    Anomie
    Appreciation
    Assertiveness
    Assumptions
    Avoidance
    Awareness
    Balance
    Baseball
    Behavior
    Being
    Betrayal
    Blame
    Brand
    Careerdevelopment
    Career Development
    Caregiving
    Certainty
    Change
    Choices
    Coexistence
    Commitments
    Communication
    Compacency
    Compassion
    Conflict
    Conversation
    Creativity
    Crowd Behavior
    Customer Experience
    Dating
    Decisiion
    Decision-making
    Desire
    Distraction
    Dreams
    Driverless Cars
    Driverless Trucks
    Emotion
    Empathy
    Escape
    Ethical
    Expectations
    Family
    Fatherhood
    Fathers
    Fear
    Fiction
    Flashfiction
    Flash Fiction
    Friendship
    Future
    Gerontology
    Goals
    Golf
    Grieving
    Habits
    Harmony
    Healing
    Healthcare
    Humor
    Hunting
    Imagination
    Innocence
    Innovation
    Instinct
    Integrity
    Intentions
    Intuition
    Jobs
    Journey
    Land
    Leadership
    Legacy
    Lies
    Listening
    Loneliness
    Loss
    Love
    Management
    Marketing
    Meaning
    Mentoring
    Mistakes
    Money
    Moral
    Music
    Mystery
    Nostalgia
    Opportunity
    Ownership
    Parents
    Passions
    Patience
    Perception
    Perfection
    Perseverance
    Personaldevelopment
    Personality
    Perspective
    Photography
    Positivity
    Presence
    Reason
    Redemption
    Relationships
    Repair
    Reputation
    Resilience
    Respect
    Romance
    Secrets
    Selfawareness
    Self-care
    Selfconfidence
    Selfdevelopment
    Self Development
    Self-knowledge
    Self-worth
    Shame
    Song Lyrics
    Sons
    Stillbirths
    Success
    Technology
    Transformational Learning
    Transition
    Trust
    Truth
    Unknown
    Values
    Vision
    Well Being
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Home | Coaching | Music | Photography | About | Blog | Contact
© Wilberg, LLC. All rights reserved. Login.
  • Home
  • Coaching
  • Music
  • Photography
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact