When nature takes over

I learned to love a wreck on the north-east coast of Bali during the years in South East Asia. I have probably done 50 dives around that wreck, and since we know the place so well, we easily go there without any guide. As rookies we thought it would be most beautiful in the morning, but we got it all wrong. It was in the late afternoon, just before sunset, we had it to ourselves, and the fish were crowding up in the big wooden container and it felt as if we and the fish were the only survivors after a big storm. Every time we went there, corals had grown more and more and the wooden ship were slowly falling apart due to the movement of the water. It is a powerful thing, when nature manages to take over. And with the painful awareness that nature cannot heal whatever we break, it is a blessing when it happens.

With that wreck on my mind, I said yes to going to Chernobyl for New Years. In Pripyat the buildings have been empty since two days after the disaster. And they do fall apart. Most of all the glass and windows are broken and trees and small plants have started growing inside. The big fields between the buildings are no longer fields, they are filled with trees and will soon become forests. 

I remember when I went to Angkor Wat and how strange it was hearing that these enormous temples were forgotten for a quite long period of time. They suddenly found them hidden in the jungle. I kind of hope Pripyat will eventually disappear in the birch forest. However, it can never be on expense of the remembrance of that fatal accident, which has affected so many peoples lives. That is the thing. There is a limit to what nature can heal.