Nature Takes Back Our Empty Cities in 2020: A Reflection on Chernobyl

One of the perhaps rare silver linings of the Covid-19 pandemic is how our planet's wildlife is actually benefiting from a global pandemic. Wildlife has been seen entering empty cities everywhere now that city streets are emptied during the Covid-19 quarantine lockdown.

We've also seen a rather quick drop in greenhouse emissions in the atmosphere since humankind has been forced into a mass global lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I wonder if anyone else sees the irony of how the environment and wildlife are actually benefiting from humanity going into the largest lockdown in human history?

(History, the world and our neighboring species could even benefit from our disappearance.....if mankind were to ever disappear...)

This reminds me of what happened in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Due to the regions radioactive contamination for many decades, residents left the area deserted, like a ghost town. In the absence of human activity in the empty ghost towns, local wildlife ended up moving back into the region and taking it over.

 The wildlife could not detect radiation in the environment, just as humans cannot. Radiation is a silent enemy. Slight genetic mutations have been the result, but despite that, the wildlife has managed to flourish in the dead zones of Chernobyl due to humans abandoning the contaminated exclusion zone.

North American Grain Elevators

The history of grain elevators is a rich and diverse discourse in North America. Both the USA and Canada contain fascinating historical landscapes of the early agricultural boom which once permeated North America.

Grain elevators stood tall and proud in urban cities as well as in rural communities. Beacons of prosperity and wealth, these elevators cast a gentle aura of hope, stability and safety upon everyone. After all, everyone has to eat to live.

In the United States, I recently visited Buffalo, New York - an historical grain elevator mecca. Many grain elevators in Buffalo have been abandoned; a play ground for urban explorers and photographers. After laying barren and open to the curious, there is talk of demolitions these days.

After visiting Buffalo and its rich history of grain elevators, next on the list is the exploration of Manitoba's rural grain elevators in Canada - what is left of them. Manitoba has also been recognized as a mecca for a history of grain elevators, but many have been torn down.

The flimsy safety of believing these sturdy historical landmarks won't be demolished is vastly replaced with a surety that these landmarks will not be there as long as we once took for granted.

Beauty in Decay Gallery

Reflections
The truck sits as if nearly on fire.

Shades of rust almost fresh paint; Like the eye of a storm caught in autumns blaze. Nature is alive, Contrasting principles of decay. Soon the truck succumbs to nature: Healing and destructive; Swallowed in storm.

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Beauty in Decay

This was taken August of 2008, just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a wooded area. A forsaken old truck left behind to rust, but time and nature weathered the truck into beautiful decay.

The story behind the truck is not clear, but like so many abandoned vehicles and places there indeed is a story. This truck's story is mundane in scope unlike stories of lost souls (re)tracing footsteps through the empty halls of paint peeled deeply in the shadowed dreams of abandoned asylums.

Our shared archives are threads connecting us to the past.

All Material in this Photo Blog Gallery is Copyrighted & May not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my permission. This copyright is inclusive to all literary property as well as pictorial.
All Rights Reserved.