Old Trigs

I saw the trig though the stainless steel fence almost immediately and broke into a small grin of triumph.  Maybe ten feet inside the perimeter, its brown, pebbly concrete was splashed with pale lichens.  Framing it from behind were massive stacked ranks of metal beer barrels.  Leaf litter from the close-by birch trees was scattered round its base and, further back, a dip in the grass was filled with a large puddle.  Human detritus was also tangled up amongst the fallen twigs – plastic bags, polystyrene cups, food wrappers – disfiguring the little corner of wildness in the centre of the business park.  Someone had found their way to the trig at some time and placed a rather worn and weather-beaten golf ball on the top, towards the end of one of the sight-lines.  It seemed a casual act of desecration, a sign of lack of respect.  Who would have done it?  Not one of the trig nerds seeking it out; a bored employee, for some reason in possession of a golf ball?  A trespasser who had found a way round the site’s security?  It emphasised the forlorn scene.  This monument to mankind’s impulse to map and control the world, hemmed in by commerce’s bland structures, a neglected megalith, the views it was meant to command from its bend in the river Tame now hidden.  I know they’re neither as ancient nor as significant, in terms of human development, as stone circles and the like, but I feel their violation the way anyone would that of a prehistoric site.  It’s a pity to see, and I feel the sadness and the sorrow for their eventual and inevitable disappearance, these hidden-away markers of the high land.  I want them somehow to exert a chthonic power, to gather the strength of the land somehow, to show us humans that you don’t mess with the old gods with impunity.