Most weeks when I sit down to write this column, I make an honest attempt to include insights and observations outside the confines of my own small world. And most weeks I fail. My life on Chappy has never extended very far beyond the borders of the Big Camp and the golf course. As a child visiting Chappy in the summers, I had a surfeit of family to entertain me, so I never had to venture far to find friends. Later, as a young man, I had a lawn mowing business (though by today’s standards, I doubt that a push mower and a weed wacker would qualify one as a business owner), and though I expanded my physical horizons, Chappy remained a socially insular experience as I maintained the lawns of mainly the friends of my grandmother: Mrs. Patterson, Mrs. Stoddard, Aunt Ruth Marshall, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Franzen, Mrs. Mattern, and so on. Their experiences and memories mirrored closely those that rattled around in my own mind. I may not have had a particular way with the ladies back then, but I did have a way with the old ladies. Oh yeah.

Chappy ground, covered with lichen in the summer and frozen fescues in the winter. — Brad Woodger

So, I’m a bit out of touch here on our island. I won’t admit to an apathy regarding the comings and goings of Chappy, but I’ve never been very curious about what other people are doing. So, the best I can really do is to take what I do know and hope that it relates in some way to the experience of those outside my head.

I walk a lot with my head down. I always have. This may be a habit born of being humbled at early age by my Pittsfield neighborhood toughs, but it remains with me today, and has the benefit of being intimately aware of the ground beneath my feet. I really like the Chappy ground. I like the way the sand shows through almost everywhere on the fairways of our golf course, reminding me just how close to the beach I am. I like the way things crunch under my feet on Chappy — crispy lichen in summer and frozen fescues in winter. I like the way the roots of large trees that run across pathways like miniature mountain ranges, and the roots of small bushes that disappear into the earth like spider legs in sand. I like the way insects meander over obstacles, with purpose but without haste — they know exactly where they’re headed. Occasionally, I look up. To the sky. To the stars. To a seagull. To a foreboding cloud. Somehow they seem almost as close as the ground, time and space being relative in a Chappy moment.

Send Chappy news to ibwsgolf@aol.com.