The Jewel in the Crown

The way they tell the story, my friends might well have thought they were finished building their new home. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, it had exquisitely tasteful sleek, horizontal lines, with native stone and natural wood inside and out to match the mountaintop setting. Home and setting celebrated all that was real, authentic, and natural; bears came by often, and the couple had put chairs on the porch so they could sit there of an evening and watch the comings and goings at the oft-visited hummingbird feeder.

But sometimes you just need something as a capstone to an achievement, right? And so one day, as they sat in those very chairs, my friend T. remarked to her husband J. that she wanted to convert the front yard into a miniature golf course.

I only met J. yesterday and don't know him as well as T., but he clearly has wisdom to match his considerable abilities. He agreed to the miniature golf idea—T. really likes miniature golf, and he figured it would help entice friends to visit the mountain top—with one proviso: that the miniature golf course not look like a miniature golf course. Being wise herself, T. agreed. Yesterday T. and J. had a get-together called the First Annual Martini Rock Invitational (they call the house Martini Rock, it's a long story) to show the course off. Sure enough, it doesn't look like a miniature golf course. It looks like a rock garden, right down to the actual flat part where the balls roll. Like a Zen rock garden, it has a meditative air—it's a place for contemplation, except when there's six or eight people playing through the course. It has nine holes at the moment, I think; more may be in the works, I'm not sure. I think nine is plenty but for me, a little bit of miniature golf goes a long way and during some of the description of it my attention may have wandered.

Everyone who heard about it asked T. right away if the course had windmills and so forth, including me, but there aren't any. T. doesn't mind. There are compromises to be made in the best of marriages, and T. seems to be OK with this one.