Have you ever visited the golf course at Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC? Despite driving around it thousands of times, I never walked on it until today. Yesterday, I gave insufficiently-informed testimony against a proposed redevelopment of the golf course. Here is what I said, and what I should have included as well.

Hello. My name is Guy Brandenburg. I am a DC native and the current president of National Capital Astronomers, or NCA, a local educational and scientific non-profit astronomy club. I also teach at a school that is directly across 16th Street from the Rock Creek Golf Course!

I and every member of NCA that I’ve spoken to are opposed to installing a brightly-lit night-time golf driving range there.

Right now, the golf course is one of the most nearly pristine areas of the District of Columbia. Installing a illuminated, night-time golf driving range will have a very severe impact on all night-loving creatures in that part of the park. Those creatures include not only insects, birds, four-footed mammals and plants, but also humans nearby.

One special reason for my testimony is that members of my club have been, literally, holding “Exploring The Sky” sessions for the public inside Rock Creek Park, every month except winter, in conjunction with National Park Service Rangers stationed at the Nature Center and Planetarium, for over 75 continuous years, only a short distance from this driving range.

The field where we show planets, stars and galaxies to the public, at no cost, including on Saturday, May 4, two days from now, if the weather is clear, is located just south of the intersection of Military Road and Oregon Avenue – roughly 4200 feet (less than a mile) away from these new lights. Despite today’s testimony by Jamie Herr about the lights, I fear that those new lights will make observing the sky from our site nearly impossible and also affect residents along upper 16th street.

[Addition: My fear was justified. Physics says no such lights exist. Photons go on forever in straight lines unless absorbed, bent, or reflected; they don’t stop after 50 yards! Also, the developers are flat-out lying when they assure the readers that Dark Sky International (DSI) has already approved this lighting plan! I know some of the DSI activists here in DC, and they are hopping mad about this!]

[Addition: I challenge the National Links Trust to show us an example of a night time illuminated golf driving range with this magical 50 yard lighting, anywhere in the world!]

A brightly-lit installation in Rock Creek Park completely contradicts the policy that induced the Park Service to turn off all of the street lights on all of the roads in the park, many years years ago.

I wish more publicity had been given to this night time illumination plan. Previously, I had only heard about the cutting of mature trees. More review of this issue is needed by the local and national DSI.

Yes, I’m biased: I love being outside in a field at night during clear weather. One of my first dates with my wife, over 40 years ago, was a night-time stroll on a moonlit golf course in College Park, serenaded by owls.

Night time is the only time that people can see into the deep universe with their own eyes and see the Milky Way and the stellar furnaces that produced the very molecules that we are all composed of. But wasted, useless lighting at night (or WULAN) – like what I fear this proposed driving range will cause- make it impossible for people to see any of this. As an aside, even if there are habitable planets somewhere, the laws of physics and the vast distances mean there is no way at all to ever reach them. There is no planet B. We do not need to pave over, poison, and light up all of this planet, and especially not this lovely national park!

The current state of this little-used golf course is actually quite lovely. It’s a series of open meadows in the heart of the Nation’s capital, surrounded by large trees. Not being a golfer, the only changes I would recommend would be to remove the invasive alien vines that are smothering so many of those trees.

Let us not bulldoze and light up this lovely set of meadows, and let us review the lighting proposal again.

Guy Brandenburg

[Final addition: The current golf course is an amazing gem, hidden from almost everybody! Until today, I never, ever visited the place, and didn’t know anybody who had. I never even knew where it was until about a week ago, and only today (May 3, 2024) did I at last step on its grounds, though I’ve driven right by it many thousands of times and am a DC native!!!

I am amazed.

The golf course is composed of huge trees that surround amazingly beautiful and almost bucolic meadows! Right in the middle of DC! Much like the Arboretum but wilder, and much nicer than, say, the Franciscan Monastery or Howard Divinity School, or the Old Soldier’s Home!

I was flabbergasted! This golf course incredibly beautiful – in a way that most hyper-manicured golf courses are NOT.

I do think that the landscaping and vegetation need a LOT of serious gardening work, especially since there are lots of really nasty, invasive, alien vines there like English ivy and ‘tear thumb” (persicaria perfoliata). As I strolled and took photos on the ‘back nine’, I saw not a single person for 20 minutes.

As a long-time gardener and one-time farmer, I have a lot of horticultural suggestions for improvements, but the idea of cutting over a thousand big trees, simply because they overshade some of the grass, is obscene! Frankly, that shade makes those lanes much nicer to walk along if it’s hot and sunny — unlike the unshaded National Mall where it gets hot as hell!

But basically, the RCGC s very beautiful as it is, even without any improvement! I even found a pond filled with cattails and bullfrogs, and thickets with lots of wineberries, raspberries and blackberries, blooming right now.

I wish I had known about the place earlier, when I was raising my kids and grandkids! I encourage everyone to go visit, whether you play golf or not! (I do not, but I can see how it might be a great thing to do on this mostly-natural set of meadows, instead of the totally artificial and highly-poisoned typical US golf course.)

Yes, it needs a lot of serious gardening help, but let us not commit obscenities by cutting over a thousand big, beautiful hardwood canopy trees and lighting it all up with a driving range! ]