short story

We were playing golf at about 4 am in the midnight sun on our tundra course. There were just the two of us. As we were approaching the crooked hole, we noticed that a few caribou were moving towards us from around the other side of the "upstairs" hole. The upstairs hole is a green elevated 25 feet above the fairway, surrounded by Canadian shield rock. The green measures a mere 3 feet wide by about 20 feet long. The rocks surrounding the green jut out of the ground at a near 90 degree angle. Miss the green and you will end up with 13 stroke.
The caribou came closer and more of them were comming from around the hill. Many more. Soon we realized that there were a hundred animals galloping right towards us. We had nowhere to go so we just stood there. I found myself lost in a sea of caribou all wide eyed and snorting. They dashed left and right of me. These animals never saw me until I was right in front of them. As if I were in a scene from Jurassic Park where a herd of small dinosaurs dashed about, turning in unison, jumping over the movie's heros as they lay hiding behind a felled tree. My problem is that I live hundreds of miles north of the nearest tree. I had nowhere to hide. After a few moments, I wondered if my golfing partner had been trampled to death or if I was to face that fate myself. I began to hoot and holler waving my prized 6 iron wildly. This action at least kept the animals from getting too close as they were more aware of my presence. Soon there were just a few stragglers as the rest of the herd ran off to disappear around the next hill. The last caribou pranced about left and right hesitating to cross my path. Eventually the animal snorted at me then trotted away to meet up with the others.
It was very quiet.
We looked at each other grinning from ear to ear. Then the laughter broke out. The whole scene took all of one minute. There was not an animal to be seen or heard afterward. I had trouble remembering what I was shooting. Was I at three strokes or four? We both picked up our balls and walked back to the tee as we could not agree upon the status of the game. After the tee shot, I had found my ball to be lying in what a herd of caribou always leave behind. 'Bou droppings. They were everywhere.

the crooked hole

On the southern portion of Baffin Island, there is a group of men that have built a golf course on the tundra. The course is not a well groomed and artistically landscaped piece of golfery. It is basically a stretch of tundra, sand and rock that has 9 "greens" distibuted about here and there. The greens are reminants of carpet laid out across a flat sandy and mossy patch of tundra. The fairways are what ever God has created and laid out before us. It looks not like a golf course but it is the best golfing available in the eastern arctic.
The crooked hole is a notorious hole that lies on a slope of about 25 degrees. The green (carpet) will not allow the ball to stop within 8 feet of the hole. No matter how slowly the hole is approached with the most skillful of putts, the ball will roll down the hill if it doesn't sink in the hole. So aptly named,The Crooked Hole. Many times I have missed a 10 foot putt 1/4 of an inch to the left of the hole only to watch the ball "orbit" around the hole then roll back down the hill. I call that shot "Apollo 13".
The crooked hole is the hardest hole to putt but Nunavut's make shift golf course has other holes that are much harder to approach.