Pliny's Holiday (sorrowful part)

The next morning we made ready to check out of our cabin. Before leaving we took a walk around the grounds, for we had reason to believe there had once been a wildlife park there, and something previously unknown to me, called a Mini Golf. And now I come to the most sorrowful part of my story.

We walked across to an area behind the furthest cabins, to a large deserted building, and peered through the windows. This building looked as though it had once been an office and a place to welcome visitors. Inside we saw a stand containing dusty postcards, several pieces of broken equipment and a purple couch, piled high with papers and an old crumpled sheet.

Beyond the building we could see the Mini Golf. A sad thing is a Mini Golf. This one consists of short runs marked with lengths of splintered wood, and pieces of carpet lying on them, rucked and torn. Here and there are cracked and peeling statues of headless kangaroos. Dead spike-leaved bushes and weeds lean at crazy angles in the hard dry dirt. A notice on a post describes the rules of playing Mini Golf.

My companions assured me that Mini Golf is not always played this way. Nevertheless, it was with heavy heart that I surveyed the further reaches of this wildlife garden. No wildlife was in evidence, save the occasional rustling of a bird. Alas for the fragility of the works of man! A dry water course, a broken structure that may once have been a bird enclosure, a circular stone construction and a creaking wooden windmill that turned, to no avail, in the strengthening breeze. A disconnected system of watering pipes in a dying forest of pines.

I could not help but think of my Pompeii, and what had happened there. A place that had once been filled with human activity and purpose, now come to naught. It was enough to make even a man of self-discipline and reason such as myself reflect and shed a tear.

And on this sorrowful note I shall end this description, leaving you the reader to take from it whatever lesson that you will. Tomorrow I shall continue on a brighter theme, for the rest of the day, though windy, was most pleasant, and full of wonders.

Vale!
Gaius Plinius Secundus