Playing in Rain, I meet Tom Bombadil

1

When I was a new dad, I'd come home from teaching in San Jose around 330, round the summit of Highway 17 and see that big old ocean stretched out below. Like a window on another world.

And it was. The window was from 330 to about 530, when I'd have to be home in time to cook food for my family and take care of the little guy. And that window often was filled with disc golf. One problem: in the winter it rains, and so it would rain, and I'd try to gauge the amount of rain on my windshield as I approached the exit. Either get off here and play, or admit it was too wet and go on home.

I played in a lot of rain.

2

Today I woke up to a cold threatening to rain day. Great: roofers are on my house, the paper is down but the shingles aren't all on. Solar panels are waiting to be lifted and put on the roof. Oh well. Take the boy to his math class; take the dog for a walk in the chill air; go to the doc for a look at the overall health of the body; drop by the local skateboard store to see about possible teen jobs for the son and heir. Then to the cafe for caffeine in its most glorious form, and writing until the computer says "running on reserve battery."

Then grab a sandwich and play some disc. Except it is dumping rain. So eat food and wait for the run to stop. And when it doesn't go to the course and wait. And read.

The rain pauses for a long couple minutes. Then back comes the rain.

3

Sitting in the car does things to a man. Well, not quite like being out at sea for months. But the rain sleets down the windshield, and so if you watch the trees through the water they seem to shiver and melt, like some Hollywood hallucination special effect.

Ok time to do this. Patagonia rain shell with hood, check. Ski hat with brim, check. T shirt to wipe down discs, check.

The plan: throw from under the trees on hole 20 over to the practice basket, then run and putt out and run back and dry off and do it again.

No cars in the parking lot by now. 5 pm and I've got the place to myself; even the birds are safe inside, doing whatever birds do when they are hiding out from rain. Reading bird books? Considering new migration routes?

And then I meet Tom Bombadil.

3

Tom (not his real name) drove up in a slightly beater car of uncertain coloration. I've seen him up at de la (the name of our arcadian disc golf course) many's the time, over the course of 14 years. He's got the weatherbeaten face of someone who spends a good deal of time outdoors, and for all the time's I've seen him playing, I've also seen him working on the course or taking with someone, usually about their lost disc.

Both Toms are merry fellows,who wanter and explore the natural world. Both are known for the quality of their voices. The Tom with the beater car proceeded to tell me stories about finding discs in the most amazing places, including 300 feet down a huge arroyo way off the beaten path of Hole 4, and underneath a massive tree that had fallen in the night. The discs thus found are mysterious and epic, like any number of things from Tolkien. No “one ring” discs, but certainly discs of uncertain provenance and ancient manufacture. One disc in particular got my attention, an almost mythic disc I've never heard of: the fabled Pegasus.

As the rain fell and the day wound down, Tom regaled me with tale after tale of discs found and lost, rare plastics unearthed, valuable ace-run discs stolen by scoundrels, the Building of the Course at Pinto Lake. He was out in the rain to pull poison oak, which when wet gives up its long long runner roots (unlike weedwacking or cutting which only lets it come back bigger and badder than ever).

I bade him farewell, threw a final set of discs out into the now ridiculous rain, and hauled to my car. As I looked back, I saw Tom traipsing off into the brush. And thought of that rhyme from time out of mind:

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.