Working on Changing the Amazon Golf Course to Your Great Amazon Golf Course

Marmelita, Margarita, and Guido taking inventory in the Amazon Golf Course Clubhouse

Yesterday Marmelita and I worked on the Amazon Golf Course. We helped the course manager Margarita, and four men working with Stihl weed eaters, two men raking grass and pushing a wheelbarrow hauling off the cut grass. We planted trees, hauled compost, and watered the new plantings. We got tired, hungry and sunburned but enjoyed our day of manual labor.

Around 2:00pm, I hung a hammock on the top floor of the Amazon Golf Course Clubhouse where I could catch a breeze and look out over the course. I took a little nap, and I don’t know if it was a dream, a miracle, or a partially awake vision, but what ever it was, I “saw” Your Great Amazon Golf Course completed. I think it was a vision, and I want to share it with you.

I sat at a table on the second story of what is for now simply the Amazon Golf Course Clubhouse, looking out over the golf course around four in the afternoon, and spent over an hour typing on my Mac laptop, the vision that I have been blessed to share with you.

I have been thinking small. Thinking small usually returns…well, small results. Let me give you a few examples. Just keeping the grass mowed for the Amazon Golf Course is thinking small. Planting around 100 trees and blooming plants like we did when we built the course is thinking small. I had a small idea last year about this time. I wrote a “small” article in the Dawn on the Amazon Captain’s Blog, titled, Amazon Golf Course, Iquitos Peru, Opens Under New Management, asking for donations to plant another 200 trees and blooming bushes and shrubs. Maybe it was the smallness of my suggestion. No one donated one dollar or one hour of labor to help plant 200 trees so no trees were planted during the last year. Not one tree. No blooming bush. Not one hibiscus blossom, fewer hummingbirds. My ideas suffered from thinking small.

Margarita and Marmelita planting Palmarosa trees at the Amazon Golf Course

Besides that, I thought small that we needed a few hundred pounds of lime to adjust the PH of the soil from acidic to neutral. Ha ha, we need a few hundred tons of lime. I thought small that we needed a few hundred bags of compost. We need a few hundred tons of compost. I thought we could keep up with a couple of push mowers and a couple of weed eaters, ha, ja, he, je, hi, ji, ji, jijijijijiji…

Don’t think small folks. This is not your back yard, patio, garden. This is the 24 acres we built a golf course on. I can’t even see the backside of my vision from where I was sitting yesterday on the second floor of the clubhouse. I am proud of what we have done here in spite of thinking small. Some of us are more small minded than others, but that is a different part of our story.

Now don’t get me wrong, 200 strategically landscaped trees and bushes over one year old today would have made a big difference, and some of you members should have stepped up, and some of you golfers could have helped, but that is a water hazard best avoided. Let’s start now. Two hundred trees would disappear in 24 acres of golf course. To change the Amazon Golf Course into Your Great Amazon Golf Course we need 2,000 trees and blooming bushes, and flowering shrubs. I am personally going to plant 200 trees, bushes and shrubs, but we need you to step up and help with the other 1,800 plants that will make the big difference.

View of the Amazon Golf Course From the top floor of the Amazon Golf Course Clubhouse

Come out to the land with me. Let’s walk around. Use your imagination. Don’t think small like I did for three years. Think big. Imagine the possibilities. All of the borders are wasted. Do you want our groundkeepers to fight worthless weeds or to prune flowering vines? There is plenty of space, and even necessity, for shade trees near all of the tee offs and around behind the greens. The front and back could be landscaped so beautiful you would be proud to be a member or to say you golfed in the jungle gardens.

Imagine bougainvillea vines blooming over the entrance of the lane to Your Great Amazon Golf Course. Palmarosa trees that grow naturally looking like they are pruned every day, intermingled with Hibiscus, Locura, and Alamondas all around the borders, and lining the drive. Why isn’t the clubhouse surrounded in a jungle garden with only a path to the front and rear door? I will tell you why, because we were thinking small. Let’s fix it. Be part of the vision. Do something. We need your support.