Pitchmarks Archive ADVENTure #21 - “The Alchemy of Adventure”
(Reproduced with the permission of The Links Diary)
“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow”
Anita Desai
It is the time of year when many have already stowed away their sticks, to await the promise of early spring. Other sets are packed for transit, heading to warmer climes such as Cape Town in a migration of sorts, like snow geese or griffin vultures. Following the seasons, or simply fleeing them.
Packing for the north of Scotland in late November is a precarious business. Each item must earn its keep in the minimal luggage allowance, but how many layers is too many? And what might three degrees above actually feel like, when it is caressed by an Atlantic breeze? We have only a single flight bag; selection of the fourteen clubs between us is the source of the longest deliberation. Carrying only a half-set each is a delicious ingredient of this assignment.
Eyebrows are raised whenever the trip is mentioned, for daylight is short and the weather likely to be awful, or worse. I wonder if others see this mission as an act of “quiet desperation”, as Thoreau put it, and perhaps it is, though not in the way they think, or he meant. I am desperate to see these places, and to linger under a vast northern sky before winter sets in, but this urgency is somehow borne of having almost lost sight of golf only a while back.
Drowning in administration, I could not see the wood for the trees two years ago. But golf, and writing, had plucked me from my comfort zone, and plunged me back into this second half of life anew, exhilarated for my back nine. In each new voyage and every terrifying blank page I found opportunity where once lay terror, and the sort of golf we were driving towards was exactly the tonic I yearned for as the end of another year approached.
Choosing a travel companion wasn’t hard. Simon and I had bonded over a shared love for Cleeve Hill - an inland template for the kind of rugged golfing landscape we were heading for. At Cleeve, the altitude, the timeless design, the four-seasons-in-one-day conditions and the staggering, mind-bending views make every hole - no, every shot - feel like an adventure, and I have come to understand that gorgeous plateau, perched above Cheltenham like some celestial playpark, as more a state of mind than a physical destination. An attitude; one that engenders a sense of agency, a defiant hope.
The highland roads were desolate, haunting. We hired a Defender - the only suitable vehicle for this field trip, given that Simon had left Eric - Cleeve’s trusty, yellow Land Rover - behind. Rumbling along the A836, the horizon shifted from snow-capped mountain to open moorland and back again. An occasional sign would indicate some idyllic hamlet - Sciberscross and Achaneas to the east; Alltnacaillich to the west, tucked away in the dark shadow of Ben Hope.
Simon’s role was that of a friend, a fellow explorer. But he is also a gifted photographer, though if we’d stopped each time we found a view we wanted to preserve, we’d have pulled in every few yards, and would still be heading north. By the time we reached Tongue, sleep was easy to find, and presently we were up and on the road again, the short, sturdy windscreen wipers frantically sweeping away horizontal rain as the headlamps bleached this monochrome landscape of vast contours.
As intrepid golfing destinations go, Durness is hard to beat. You drive, fly and drive to the middle of nowhere, and then head out from there, drifting further away from shops, and screens, and, well, normal life with every thrilling curve of gravel track. And then you arrive, and stare, and try to remember to breathe, for you understand in an instant why the very mention of this facsimile of the pure game brings a wild look to the eyes of the few souls who’ve made it there. Durness is pretty much indescribable, in the same way that parenthood or grief or hallucinogens are. You have to experience it for yourself. And soon.
From there, this pilgrimage continued, though we wondered if we’d peaked too early. The following morning we whipped around Reay, and delighted in that prime example of a golfing community, and in the crashing waves of the surf beach beside it. We battered down Sutherland’s east coast to Dornoch, and ran through her deserted stone streets hours before sunrise. We strolled across the ancient links and felt the strongest of connections to this strange old game’s pioneers in the resistance of the tight sward, with the whistle of the wind in our ears…always with the wind in our ears.
And we passed through the tiny wrought iron gate into Brora more times than would seem strictly necessary, though we still left wanting to do so again and again, somehow prising ourselves away. For Brora seemed like a portal to another, deeper dimension, where golf might simply be our chosen prism for self-expression, self-exploration. Self-discovery, even. The spirit of Eric was with us on this journey, and these coastal outposts felt like Cleeve on steroids; maybe its wild, second cousins. I am yet to meet a face that didn’t dissolve into a wistful smile at the very mention of Brora. It seems to be synonymous with love, for the lucky ones that have entered that realm.
But a while later, typing this out, I realise that the whole trip was not really about the specifics of the golf courses, fabulous though they are. Nor was it about remote stone bridges over swollen mountain streams, or views across the cold Atlantic, or the Beaver Moon hanging in a star-studded sky above the Royal Golf Hotel. All of those things were precious, and preserved, not only in Simon’s artwork but in the grey matter of my head, imprinted on my memory for all eternity, or at least my little chunk of it. No, the point of it - the reason I knew we had to go, even in late November - was that I knew this process would change us.
By stepping into the unknown, and exploring with the fresh eyes of the traveller, we learn who we are and what we value, and when we return, as in Homer’s “Odyssey” or Coelho’s “The Alchemist”, we are moved by the trip to a different way of being. Not so long ago, I’d all but lost the game, and with it a good portion of my heart, for golf is my longest relationship bar Mum. But I didn’t quite give the game up - couldn’t quite give the game up - and through missions like this, I have come to comprehend why.
In the simple act of knocking a ball around, in landscapes too wild and wonderful for words, I have learned to sometimes leave the past and future alone, and to find that exquisite, delicate beauty that resides in the present. Golf, and the equally mysterious craft of writing, have brought me to - or brought to me - an altered state, one in which I am awake to the shimmering splendour of the world around me.
Anita Desai flushed it when she said “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow”. Some percentage of “me” is Brora, and another part Durness. There’s a decent slice of Cleeve in there, and Sand Hills, and Rye, and “so on and so forth”, as my late father used to say. Adventures, each and every one, but this catalogue of memories, and the hatching plan to create the next cache, have cast a spell on me. They have made me feel alive, moved me towards the person I’d always meant to be.
It’s alchemy, alright…
This essay is reproduced with the permission of The Links Diary - it appeared to my delight in No.8. If you aren’t yet familiar with this glorious, independent publication - “tapping into the rich fabric of storytelling” - stop what you are doing and find out more here.
Alchemy indeed 🙏