Monday Update

HCC staff worked alongside the Dryject staff and had a productive day. We will pick back up in the morning. We are finished holes #1-12.  Tomorrow, we will wrap up by finishing holes 13-18 and the practice green.  Once the sand dries that is left on the surface, we will manually broom the greens to disperse it and make the greens more playable. There will be some disruption, but not as bad as one might think. This program pays huge dividends in the future as we continually incorporate sand to make the greens firmer. On the first 12 greens, we incorporated 25 tons of sand!

At this morning's green committee meeting, I was updating the committee on our progress this fall and one of the 1st things I always talk about is the latest weather data.  That led to briefly talking about the forest fires occurring in the area.  It is important to understand this if this is something of concern to you. I was talking to the Highlands Fire Chief last week about the subject and he pointed out that when we hear the word forest fire, we immediately picture scenes from out west, where fires devistate thousands of acres at a time, with flames shooting 75' in the air, jumping tree top to tree top.  In our environment of mixed deciduous and pine forests with higher humidity, this is rarely, if ever, the case.  What you find here are sap filled trees that tend to fair well in these fires. What mainly burns are fallen leaves on the ground. In fact, these smoldering leaves are why there is so much smoke. Furthermore, a lot of smoke is also caused from "burn back" operations performed by US Forest Service professionals; they burn land ahead of a fire to create a firestop. It certainly is a science in itself and one I am grateful people have a passion for.  So if you read stories or hear rumors of out of control fires, please understand that while they are very serious and can be dangerous, they may not be to the level of what we see on television.  At the current time, most of the fires in our area are under control and no homes were ever in jeopardy.  At any given time, some place in the US is suffering from drought and experiencing similar condtions to what we are.  These trained professionals often travel from location to location fighting fires on federal land.  Every time I see the helicopter fly over with the giant bucket of water dipped from a local lake, I think about what that costs taxpayers. Then I think if they weren't here, they would be elsewhere doing the same thing.