Surprise in the Woods

Last week I wrote about losing one of my favorite discs, a new Mamba that had become my “go to” driver.  It was disheartening when it became lost in a thickly-weeded area just off the fairway.  There was little doubt about what area it was in, but accessing it was quite difficult.

This can also happen when one throws a disc over water – whether a lake, stream, pond, or other mass of water that flows through or near a hole on the disc golf course.  This past weekend my son had a similar experience when he threw one of his discs into an overgrown area just to the left of hole one on T-1 at Bill Frederick Park. 

Lately, Danny has been trying to get back to basics and so takes a limited number of discs with him when we play in the evening.  He has only been carrying a Roc, a Teebird, and two putters.  So, the other night when he threw across the bridge on hole 5, and his disc drifted just a bit too far to the left of the bridge and hit the overgrowth, it was important for him to try and recover that disc.

We looked for a while, not certain if it had punched through the tree foliage, or if it had been stopped and dropped into the creek running just below the bridge and overgrowth.  Not finding the disc in any obvious places, Danny decided to go into the overgrown weeds and foliage to try and find it. 

In the meantime, I was up on the bridge looking down into the murky, dark water trying to find the disc.  As my eyes got adjusted to the darkness, I finally found the disc down in the water.  At just about the same time he called out that he also saw where the disc was.  I was not confident that he was looking at the same disc that I was, because it seemed as though there was too much foliage for him to see it from his angle.

A few minutes later, he spied his disc, the same one I was looking at, and I was able to see the disc that he originally found.  So there were two discs to recover!  Getting to the discs was another matter.  Eventually he decided to remove his shoes and wade into the water to recover them.  I know he was happy to get his disc back. 

As he was pulling the other disc out he said, “Maybe it won’t have a name on it.”  Disc golfers generally put their name and phone number on the back of their discs with a black Sharpie marker so that if it ever gets lost in overgrowth or water, and later gets recovered by another disc golfer, there is a way to notify the owner of the disc.  It also is a rule to have an identifiable marking on any disc that you use during competition, in case another person in your group happens to throw the very same disk.

In the event of a lost disc, etiquette demands that the person who finds discs, should give the owner a call.  However, the rule also stands, “No name, fair game!” meaning if there is no marking on the disc the person who recovers it is free to keep the lost disc.

As he pulled the disc from the water, he said, “Oh, it has a name and phone number on it!  And it says, ‘Lynda Voss!’”  How funny was that!  He had recovered a disc that I had lost months ago in that very creek and was unable to find.  I had totally forgotten about it.  The disc was a Leopard that got caught by the cross wind and ended up in the creek.