Old Pits

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

As you know, we can sometimes insert a purely personal note into the discussion of a text. 

Carl and his companions will explore the City while its council meets:

"'Be careful, though,' said Ronwy. 'There are many old pits and other dangerous places hidden by brush and rubble.'" (p. 32)

My father was mining engineer in a gypsum mine in Cumberland (now Cumbria) decades ago. In the summer of 1961, some of us visited and entered the mine which was approached by a downward slanting tunnel, not by a vertical descent. That mine, long closed, is near here and it is possible to walk very close to it but there are signs warning, "Danger. Keep Away." Although I would really like to walk onto the remembered site and to see the buildings and the mine entrance, it would obviously be unacceptably dangerous to walk past the signs: either illegal or at least should be.

Every building or other location that we visit or spend time in will one day be disused. Sometimes it happens in our lifetimes. Poul Anderson and other sf writers imagine the far future when nothing familiar to us will remain.