Bovenzi Park
Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 8:08 pm
So while Hadwen Park chugs along at a pace whose rhythms I have only so much influence over, my life ebbs by like blood dripping. And while the attention span is a bit short for true crippling depression, it's not that hard to figure out what depression is and when you have it.
All because I'm not building a course right now. Just to be loading the dogs and chainsaws into the truck to meet friends in the woods to build a course. How is it possible to have screwed up one's life to the point of not being able to do, right now, the thing one was meant to do? The funnest, most satisfying, most fulfilling thing: Building a disc golf course. With Hadwen stuck in the getting-permission phase, precluding all chainsawing, and me already thinking at the last "Stand there and field questions from angry neighbors who hate me" meeting how great it would be if I could turn myself into the kind of monster in "The Thing" that one of the guys tied to a chair turned into when they touched red-hot metal to his blood, and bite a few heads off. Literally bite their heads off.
This is what happened, in a very large nutshell. I took my chainsaws and dogs to Maravista off West Mountain St in Worcester close to Holden, home of the infamous Dick Hurz. I went there to help Rick Belhumeur for once with his trees at his mom's house. And right there there's a park where, according to Rick, no one goes.
So we look it up and it's not a park but a piece of conservation land owned by the Worcester Land Trust, which, btw, bought a big chuck of Tommy Southwick's land, including Southwick Pond, the water we only see a small part of from Holes 16 and 17 at Maple Hill. The Worcester Land Trust is dedicated to keeping land undeveloped.
Rick visits Bovenzi Park first, before our research, just because we happened to talk about it that one time, and he says holy cow. It's been logged, in part because of the Asian Longhorn Beetle, and the half that I eventually walked (before we looked at the map and realized it's twice as big and has a whole other piece of land) is already cleared as if you were making a disc golf course. It's listed variously as 80 and 120 acres. So after looking at the map I had walked 40 acres that would make a superb disc golf course (if designed well). The disc golf course work of cutting and clearing has been done, with big spaces between medium to medium-large trees. Everything else has been cut down and chipped, with the wood chips layering the cart paths and other large areas of ground.
To build a course there would mean more brushhogging and weedwhacking than chainsawing. The dead wood is all gone, chipped. It could be a course with holes of all length, including an 800 hole. The loggers left lots of space between trees. There are potential fairways EVERYWHERE, with no areas that are too dense or too wet or otherwise unusable. The unusable space in this abundantly spacious woods, would be close to houses. Stay away from houses, especially when there's plenty of room to do so. One complaining neighbor...
So, I called the Worcester Land Trust and Colin, who answered -- this guy knows how to answer the phone -- with, "Jason Southwick of the famous Southwick Family in Leicester and disc golf," and on and on a little. And I say, getting right to the point, "I'd like to spearhead a volunteer effort to build a free public disc golf course at Bovenzi Park."
And he seems delighted by the idea, and says he has to scan the documents related to what can and can't be done at Bovenzi Park, and says he'll bring it up at the next WLT Board meeting next Wednesday.
Well, I'm fairly flabbergasted by this turn of events. Hadwen Park will proceed as it proceeds, but if I get a chance to start on this new piece of land, it starts. These first two steps, finding a suitable piece of land and getting permission? Pure fkng soul-grinding "please take a seat in Hell" torture. And the diplomacy, ahh diplomacy. Diplomacy has always been hard for me, like a foreign language you kinda know, but is fatiguing. Sometimes it's best to skip diplomacy and say something to the effect of "You and your slut mom can both sk meye dk." You know, bring the conversation to the point where you're really talking.
Granted, there's a fine line and some people disagree with my approach to human interaction. My wife, my friends, my critics, my supporters, my dad, all my siblings, most of my cousins. But I'm not one to fret about the fringe and its lunatic opinions.
Sometimes it's enough to know just what you know.
Happiness is...
...loading the dogs and chainsaws into the truck in the morning.
All because I'm not building a course right now. Just to be loading the dogs and chainsaws into the truck to meet friends in the woods to build a course. How is it possible to have screwed up one's life to the point of not being able to do, right now, the thing one was meant to do? The funnest, most satisfying, most fulfilling thing: Building a disc golf course. With Hadwen stuck in the getting-permission phase, precluding all chainsawing, and me already thinking at the last "Stand there and field questions from angry neighbors who hate me" meeting how great it would be if I could turn myself into the kind of monster in "The Thing" that one of the guys tied to a chair turned into when they touched red-hot metal to his blood, and bite a few heads off. Literally bite their heads off.
This is what happened, in a very large nutshell. I took my chainsaws and dogs to Maravista off West Mountain St in Worcester close to Holden, home of the infamous Dick Hurz. I went there to help Rick Belhumeur for once with his trees at his mom's house. And right there there's a park where, according to Rick, no one goes.
So we look it up and it's not a park but a piece of conservation land owned by the Worcester Land Trust, which, btw, bought a big chuck of Tommy Southwick's land, including Southwick Pond, the water we only see a small part of from Holes 16 and 17 at Maple Hill. The Worcester Land Trust is dedicated to keeping land undeveloped.
Rick visits Bovenzi Park first, before our research, just because we happened to talk about it that one time, and he says holy cow. It's been logged, in part because of the Asian Longhorn Beetle, and the half that I eventually walked (before we looked at the map and realized it's twice as big and has a whole other piece of land) is already cleared as if you were making a disc golf course. It's listed variously as 80 and 120 acres. So after looking at the map I had walked 40 acres that would make a superb disc golf course (if designed well). The disc golf course work of cutting and clearing has been done, with big spaces between medium to medium-large trees. Everything else has been cut down and chipped, with the wood chips layering the cart paths and other large areas of ground.
To build a course there would mean more brushhogging and weedwhacking than chainsawing. The dead wood is all gone, chipped. It could be a course with holes of all length, including an 800 hole. The loggers left lots of space between trees. There are potential fairways EVERYWHERE, with no areas that are too dense or too wet or otherwise unusable. The unusable space in this abundantly spacious woods, would be close to houses. Stay away from houses, especially when there's plenty of room to do so. One complaining neighbor...
So, I called the Worcester Land Trust and Colin, who answered -- this guy knows how to answer the phone -- with, "Jason Southwick of the famous Southwick Family in Leicester and disc golf," and on and on a little. And I say, getting right to the point, "I'd like to spearhead a volunteer effort to build a free public disc golf course at Bovenzi Park."
And he seems delighted by the idea, and says he has to scan the documents related to what can and can't be done at Bovenzi Park, and says he'll bring it up at the next WLT Board meeting next Wednesday.
Well, I'm fairly flabbergasted by this turn of events. Hadwen Park will proceed as it proceeds, but if I get a chance to start on this new piece of land, it starts. These first two steps, finding a suitable piece of land and getting permission? Pure fkng soul-grinding "please take a seat in Hell" torture. And the diplomacy, ahh diplomacy. Diplomacy has always been hard for me, like a foreign language you kinda know, but is fatiguing. Sometimes it's best to skip diplomacy and say something to the effect of "You and your slut mom can both sk meye dk." You know, bring the conversation to the point where you're really talking.
Granted, there's a fine line and some people disagree with my approach to human interaction. My wife, my friends, my critics, my supporters, my dad, all my siblings, most of my cousins. But I'm not one to fret about the fringe and its lunatic opinions.
Sometimes it's enough to know just what you know.
Happiness is...
...loading the dogs and chainsaws into the truck in the morning.
