Pitchmarks + “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.
