I love playing disc golf. There is something about the discs flying through the air and (hopefully) landing where you were aiming that is very cathartic to me. I started playing in the early 90s when I lived in Rochester, NY. There was a group of guys that I played with almost daily at Ellison Park. Until that point, I didn’t even know that the sport existed.

I moved back to Nashville, TN with this new love of throwing plastic at metal baskets and played once or twice. The courses I played in Nashville were very different than the course I played in Rochester. Ellison Park, in Rochester, is out in the open. There are some trees but not really very many that get. in your way. The course in Nashville on the other hand were cut straight through the woods! I was used to throwing big hyzer shots, not flat straight tunnel shots!

That coupled with the fact I didn’t have any friends who were interested in playing and the lack of a car to get to the courses, my discs got put away and it would be decades until I picked them up again.

Then on Christmas day 2019. I pulled those old discs out and went to Ox Bow Park to the Flying Disc Sanctuary. I am pretty sure, being Christmas day and all, that I was completely alone on the course. Which was probably good as I likely took about 200+ shots to get around the course! It was fun though and I thought I should play more. But, it was winter in Northern Indiana and that particular Christmas Day was very warm so the disc got put away again.

I would go out to play from time to time for the next several years. Until I asked my Grandson Maddox if he wanted to go play with me. He was 5 at the time and wanted to do anything that I was doing. There was something that clicked that hot summer morning. I might have been his joy when he finally got the disc to sail through the air. It might have been the easy feeling of living in that moment. I might have been just being out walking in the sunshine. Whatever it was, I was hooked.

I played a lot of “Ball Golf” in those years between being in love with throwing discs and I had fun. I enjoyed the game but there were a lot of things that turned me off about it as well. The cost was a big part of that as was the time commitment. 4 hours for a casual round just got to be too much with a growing family.

There was also the feeling that even though you were outside, the manicured nature of a golf course was just not the same as being in wild nature. Then there were the stupid golf carts, dress codes, pretentious and irate behavior of some of the other golfers that just turned me off. I stopped playing ball golf and have never lamented that decision.

In disc golf, even the most manicured courses are still pretty wild. Well, the ones that I play are. Some of the big courses where the elite pro events take places are more like their ball golf counterparts.

I consider Ox Bow to be my home course. It’s less than 5 minutes from my house, and I play there more than any other course. My wife bought me a pass for Christmas last year, and I have never used a gift as much as this one. I know all three of the gatehouse attendants, and they know me. If I go and don’t see someone I know playing, it is a rare day. I might be biased, but it’s the best disc golf course I have ever been to. Okay, I am biased, but it’s a really neat spot.

A great feature of the park is that even though it is in a mostly urban/suburban area, you still feel the wildness of the place. I am going to write up a history of the park in a later post, mostly because I want to do the research and get to know the place better. My mother once told me that when se and my father were first married, they would pack a picnic and go to the park to watch the hundreds of deer that roamed around the area.

Which brings me to the admittedly obfuscated subject of this post. The interesting bits of nature I have found at Ox Bow Flying Disc Sanctuary.

I plan to add to this catalog as I happen across new discoveries.