(TUCSON, AZ) The 6:15 am Southwest Airlines flight that Jim and I boarded for Tucson yesterday made a stop in Denver. As we landed, I saw layers of color on the landscape – a parched endless prairie that faded from straw into tan foothills below where snow-capped peaks met a Tiffany blue wrapping. It was the same palate I see in photos of Canada north of the line at which the deciduous forest ends. There are a few photos like this for you to look at on the Trip page.
Five members of two golf foursomes that we formed about 10 years ago, including Jim, Dan and I, will be spending the next three days on the lush courses of Tucson’s country clubs. Despite being set in kitty litter of the kind that you find in Inuvik, these courses make Road’s End, the three-hole course in the Arctic, seem moonlike. At least, that’s how I imagine it.
The Tucson outing, like other annual getaways that the golfers have taken, is called the “Man Among Men” tournament – a sophomoric, somewhat embarrassing phrase intended to describe the escapades of guys who only remember how to live outside the lines the way they, as humans with Y chromosomes, were permitted in their youth. Mike came up with the name.
Of those original eight golfers, one no longer cares to make the effort to go on the trips and two have passed away. We recruited one fellow to fill in for the guy who dropped out without God’s intervention. Mike, of course, is un-replaceable. We’d have seven men, an odd number for golf, if we filled in for the other guy who died. The six we have now seem to make an agreeable bunch.
On the other hand, I can’t say that the congeniality between the three “Men Among Men” on the tee in Inuvik won’t be tested after 16 days of being together on the road. Baseball teams that play well in Spring Training don’t always gel in the season.