1994 | Borrego Springs
I used to stop here to hit a few balls, but the ones in the two-dollar buckets were crippled and near-dead. So I began to collect the ones lost in the chaparral along the Balboa Park course near my home, then bring them here and hit them out into the owner’s inventory.
I met Jack one day as he pedaled out from town on an old bicycle. I was forty-six years old at the time, but he asked me if I was thinking about retirement, that I should look around for some property in the desert.
I thanked him for the encouragement, but did not mention two things which came to mind. The first, that the Borrego Valley relies on pumped groundwater from an aquifer with unknown voume and unmapped sources; at the time, hydrologists were noting that the water coming out of the wells was about 5000 years old, and replenishment of the groundwater was till a mystery. The other thing was that in my limited golfing experience, the Borrego Valley was not the place to play regularly. One course, Ram’s Hill, was atrociously gentrified, an another one, Club Circle, was an engaging nine-hole course, a donut-ring around a modest development east of town. All I remember about Club Circle is that it was windy — as I circumnavigated the course, I used a driver into the wind on a 100-yard hole, and downwind, a pitching wedge for a 200-yard tee shot.