The Generous Story That Embodies the Epitome of Disc Golf in New Hampshire
Disc golfing has very quickly become one of my favorite activities over the last few years. Earlier this year, one single act of generosity encompassed the epitome of disc golfing in New Hampshire and New England.
If you have never done it, get out and try disc golf. If you are completely unaware of what the heck "disc golfing" is, I will summarize quickly:
Disc golfing is just like regular golf with one or two funky differences. The most obvious difference is that instead of using a club and a small, incredibly frustrating ball, you use your arm and a disc (frisbee).
Your objective, very much like golf, is to throw the disc over and over again until you get the disc inside of the basket. Again, like golf, there is a "par", or an expected number of throws that it should take you to get the disc in the basket.
Below is an example of someone putting their last shot into the basket.
There are tons of courses in New England, as the sport is getting increasingly more popular.
A while back, I was playing at Bellamy Park in Dover, New Hampshire. As my wife and I were approaching hole two, two guys let us play through. They were busy looking for a disc in the water. Apparently, one of the guys was playing for the first time. Well, they were looking for their disc, as well as a second disc from the group in front of them that had also gone in the water.
By hole four, we had caught up to the first group who threw a disc in the water. As we were chatting, the guys who let us play through came sprinting up. They were thrilled that they found their disc and the one that was left by the group in front of them.
The newbie tried to return the disc to the man, but he refused. The guy said something along the lines of "you went in the water to get my disc...you should keep it." The newbie tried to refuse, forcing it back to the rightful owner.
The owner threw it back and refused it again. The rightful owner saw that the newbie only had one disc to begin with. He said something like, "seriously, keep it...now you have two discs...keep adding discs and keep coming back to play the sport."
I was amazed.
My wife and I started our disc collection with a three-pack from Play it Again Sports. We went out a few times, and the same thing happened to us. Twice.
Two times, two different people have noticed our small number of discs and have given us more. They have literally taken discs out of their bag and passed them to us.
Why? They wanted us to enjoy the sport and get better.
After it had happened to me and I got to see a similar story unfold right in front of my own eyes, I knew the action and the story embodied what disc golf culture is like.
Get out and try a round of disc golf.