About five years back, I bought a disc golf disc. I’d been thinking about doing so after watching some friends play, but didn’t really have any real plans to get into it on that particular day when I saw a disc in the Walmart clearance aisle – a place I frequented for highly discounted Lego sets as Christmas gifts for the many young cousins in our family.
There was no sticker on the disc, so I took it to a cashier and asked if the handwritten number on the back was the cost. They didn’t know any better, so my first disc golf purchase cost me all of $1.75. I’ve since learned those handwritten numbers are actually the weight of the disc in grams.
That light blue Innova TeeBird slid around in the trunk of my car for a couple of years before I actually threw it. When the COVID-19 pandemic befell the world, people fell in love with outdoor activities again. My son and I played disc golf every day it didn’t rain from June through October in 2020 while I was partially furloughed from work.
I’ve really come to love the sport. It has an elegance to it. I’ve played golf as well (with a ball, sometimes called “ball golf” or “regular golf” by disc golfers to avoid confusion), but there’s something more, well, connected for lack of a better term about releasing these aerodynamic objects from your hand. Using a club to hit a dimpled ball just isn’t as, well, pure.
But that’s beside my real point, which is the link I see between shinrin-yoku and disc golf. Most disc golf courses aren’t manicured like a golf course, and as such a round of disc golf is much like a walk in the woods on a lot of courses. And as I’ve continued to play, it’s had me wondering what kind of sports we might play and devise on the New Earth.
Of course, a person needs to be in the right mindset to see it as forest bathing. My ultra competitive, 10-year-old son has a hard time enjoying the critters and trees around him if he’s not throwing the disc at his own high standards.
But, recreationally, disc golf is a very therapeutic activity that brings some of the benefits of shinrin-yoku along with it.
My son waiting to tee off at a disc golf course in the mountains of Colorado.
ponderoku.com 