Read Online The Best American Travel Writing 2012 by Jason Wilson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jason Wilson
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wouldnât hold the authorities responsible for any health issues.
So far, the only visible sign of radiation has been a digital readout on the mostly deserted post office building in Chernobyl. Instead of telling the time and temperature, it shows the micro-roentgen levels in different sectors of the zone, which fluctuate according to changes in background radiation and the weather.
The most contaminated of the villages were bulldozed and buried soon after the explosion, with only a few mounds and ridges left to show they were ever there. The meadows are mostly gone, replaced by forest. Russia is a land of forests, but the true forest, the primeval untouched forest that human eyes may never even have seen, is called
pushcha
âwhich roughly translates as âdense forest.â This is what has been reestablishing itself at Chernobyl, regenerating at an unprecedented rate.
At the edge of Chernobyl, we stop by the half-mile-wide Pripyat River. Itâs unbelievably peaceful. A black dog, which knows Sergey, slumps down in the grass beside us. A handful of long, stoved-in rowboats moored at the shore take me back to the punts of my Oxford childhood. Theyâre stamped with the initials of the local KGB and must have been moldering here since Soviet times. Frogs plop into the water, boatmen skedaddle across the surface, dragonflies hoverâitâs like a weight has been lifted from the world. A sparrowhawk turns in lazy circles; a pair of ducks race by, low down, necks stretched, and make it to a willow on the far bank with a clatter of relief.
We pass two brick sheds with padlocks on their doors: the shrines of zaddiks, Jewish wise men.
âWhy locked?â I ask Sergey.
Not missing a beat, he says, âMany people donât like Jews.â (Something else that survived the apocalypse.)
We meander along the sleepy brown river. The main sounds are the different shades of hissing of wind in the trees: high nearby, deeper and steadier farther away. Occasionally the wind picks up, flicks a ripple along the surface. This must be what life was like one thousand years ago, when the entire human population of the globe was roughly 250 million. Thereâs space for everyone, time for everything.
On our way down off the bridge, we spot a slender roe deer 200 yards up the road. It stands still a moment, head cocked, then like a sylph it slips into the trees, so swiftly I donât even see it go. A little farther on, we spot an elk between two bushes. He looks at us, head lifted, then strolls out of sight.
The van drops us off at a dark footpath that winds up through the woods, past a chain of collapsed wooden houses. Inside, their floors are littered with clothes, bottles, stuffing from mattresses. Pieces of gutted insulation lie strewn like corpses under the trees. Itâs not so much a town with trees in it as a forest with an old town falling to pieces within it.
Sergey tells us about the herds of boar he has seen, fifty strong, rampaging through the forest. And about a starving wolf pack that surrounded a scientist friend of his in a wood one winter day. He had to shoot every last one to get away.
Itâs not just the forest thatâs come back but all its creatures. Itâs the land of Baba Yaga, the old witch of Russian folktales. Is this the world before humanity? Or after? Is there a difference?
Â
Traveling in Ukraine can be quite a party. The Ukrainians prefer not to engage in talk on its own. Itâs better with a bucket of vodka and a carton of cigarettes.
Itâs three in the afternoon of our second day when seven of us settle at a makeshift table beneath a spreading mulberry tree in the luscious garden of Ivan Nikolayevichâs home. Officially, no one is supposed to live here, but within a few months of the disaster, several hundred farmers, families like this one, returned to their ancestral homes and have been quietly living here ever since, tolerated by the
So far, the only visible sign of radiation has been a digital readout on the mostly deserted post office building in Chernobyl. Instead of telling the time and temperature, it shows the micro-roentgen levels in different sectors of the zone, which fluctuate according to changes in background radiation and the weather.
The most contaminated of the villages were bulldozed and buried soon after the explosion, with only a few mounds and ridges left to show they were ever there. The meadows are mostly gone, replaced by forest. Russia is a land of forests, but the true forest, the primeval untouched forest that human eyes may never even have seen, is called
pushcha
âwhich roughly translates as âdense forest.â This is what has been reestablishing itself at Chernobyl, regenerating at an unprecedented rate.
At the edge of Chernobyl, we stop by the half-mile-wide Pripyat River. Itâs unbelievably peaceful. A black dog, which knows Sergey, slumps down in the grass beside us. A handful of long, stoved-in rowboats moored at the shore take me back to the punts of my Oxford childhood. Theyâre stamped with the initials of the local KGB and must have been moldering here since Soviet times. Frogs plop into the water, boatmen skedaddle across the surface, dragonflies hoverâitâs like a weight has been lifted from the world. A sparrowhawk turns in lazy circles; a pair of ducks race by, low down, necks stretched, and make it to a willow on the far bank with a clatter of relief.
We pass two brick sheds with padlocks on their doors: the shrines of zaddiks, Jewish wise men.
âWhy locked?â I ask Sergey.
Not missing a beat, he says, âMany people donât like Jews.â (Something else that survived the apocalypse.)
We meander along the sleepy brown river. The main sounds are the different shades of hissing of wind in the trees: high nearby, deeper and steadier farther away. Occasionally the wind picks up, flicks a ripple along the surface. This must be what life was like one thousand years ago, when the entire human population of the globe was roughly 250 million. Thereâs space for everyone, time for everything.
On our way down off the bridge, we spot a slender roe deer 200 yards up the road. It stands still a moment, head cocked, then like a sylph it slips into the trees, so swiftly I donât even see it go. A little farther on, we spot an elk between two bushes. He looks at us, head lifted, then strolls out of sight.
The van drops us off at a dark footpath that winds up through the woods, past a chain of collapsed wooden houses. Inside, their floors are littered with clothes, bottles, stuffing from mattresses. Pieces of gutted insulation lie strewn like corpses under the trees. Itâs not so much a town with trees in it as a forest with an old town falling to pieces within it.
Sergey tells us about the herds of boar he has seen, fifty strong, rampaging through the forest. And about a starving wolf pack that surrounded a scientist friend of his in a wood one winter day. He had to shoot every last one to get away.
Itâs not just the forest thatâs come back but all its creatures. Itâs the land of Baba Yaga, the old witch of Russian folktales. Is this the world before humanity? Or after? Is there a difference?
Â
Traveling in Ukraine can be quite a party. The Ukrainians prefer not to engage in talk on its own. Itâs better with a bucket of vodka and a carton of cigarettes.
Itâs three in the afternoon of our second day when seven of us settle at a makeshift table beneath a spreading mulberry tree in the luscious garden of Ivan Nikolayevichâs home. Officially, no one is supposed to live here, but within a few months of the disaster, several hundred farmers, families like this one, returned to their ancestral homes and have been quietly living here ever since, tolerated by the
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