There is some serendipity in everyone’s journey, and for Maisie Walker, a chance encounter led her to spend this summer serving an internship at a golf course and creating her future.

Robert Horner, an architect and designer by trade, is on the Board of Directors of the Friends of Camas Prairie Golf Park in Port Townsend, Wash. It is an all-volunteer non-profit group that since January 1, 2024, has leased and now manages the city-owned 9-hole golf facility.

A man of many talents, Horner also co-owns Propolis Brewing in Port Townsend, and while working behind the bar one evening last winter, he began chatting with one of the customers, telling of the Friends’ efforts in saving the golf course. At the end of the conversation, the customer, Robin Walker, texted his daughter Maisie from his seat at the bar, telling her she should look into this.

At the time, Maisie was a junior at the University of Washington, majoring in Environmental Studies.

For her upcoming senior year, Maisie needed to do an internship through the Capstone program, which requires that students apply their education and skills to a real-world project. These internships provide practical, hands-on experience while allowing students to demonstrate their abilities in a professional setting.

“I was looking for an idea of what to do for this program,” she said. “After my dad told me about the golf course in Port Townsend, and what the management team was trying to accomplish, I got very interested.”

She spoke with Horner directly, to get more information about it, and that convinced her.

Maisie had played on the golf team while attending Cedarcrest High School in Duvall, in the Cascade foothills east of the Seattle area.

“I know my way around a golf course,” she said. “This seemed a great chance to combine my two interests.”

Maisie put together a proposal, outlining an environmental sustainability plan for the golf course, and sent it to Bob Wheeler, the president of the Friends’ Board of Directors.

“We hadn’t been actively looking to bring on an intern,” Wheeler said. “We were still really busy just focusing on getting the golf course going again. But Maisie being proactive in approaching us with the idea was very appealing, and we thought this would work in our overall mission, so we came up with a plan.”

She then sent the proposal to Ken Yocom, the dean of the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments and is also a landscape architecture professor. Yocom is also Maisie’s advisor.

Wheeler and Yocom conferred, and the two put the internship into motion.

Maisie works about 20 hours a week on her internship project, and the golf course then pays her to work an additional 20 hours a week on the grounds crew, where she works under Dylan Stanfield, the course’s superintendent. For the duration of her internship – about two and half months this summer – Maisie has been living in the RV in Wheeler’s yard, as well as doing some housesitting.

She sends weekly updates of her project to Yocom, and Wheeler and Yocom stay in contact to make sure she is in compliance. She earns college credits for her effort, and in the fall, back in school, she will condense her experience into a presentation, which she will present orally as the final step toward her graduation. Maisie then plans to attend graduate school, to earn a master’s degree in Built Environments.

Along with her internship duties and the hours she spends working on the grounds crew, Maisie also helps out with the weekly women’s clinic.

“This internship is something we would want to do more of in the future,” Wheeler says. “It fits in with our mission of having this golf facility be a true community asset, providing opportunity for people. Maisie came to us with this idea, and she was such a great fit.”

The golf facility also helps students at the nearby Port Townsend High School. The seniors have to do a final-year project, and last spring a student built birdhouses to attract swallows  to the pond area on the north end of the course along the par-3 second hole.

The facility is also home to the high school’s boys and girls golf teams, and provides free golf to the players, free range balls, and also free golf during the season to the players who just come out on their own to play. In exchange, the facility teaches golf etiquette to the players, with them also helping out on work parties to maintain the course.

Sounds like a good place for young people to find themselves.