still alive. That was months ago. I havenât heard any more from David, but Aisha still calls, asking if there is any news. Sometimes her voice is drowned out by the rumble of the salt trucks; sometimes I hear children playing or the call to prayer. At times Aisha cries on the phone, but I have no answers for the girl from Timbuktu.
HENRY SHUKMAN
Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden
FROM
Outside
Â
T HE WILD BOAR is standing 30 or 40 yards away, at the bottom of a grassy bank, staring right at me. Even from this distance I can see its outrageously long snout, its giant pointed ears, and the spiny bristles along its back. It looks part porcupine, a number of shades of ocher and gray. And itâs far bigger than I expected, maybe chest-high to a man. The boar is like some minor forest god straight from the wilderness, gazing wild-eyed at the strange spectacle of a human being. For a moment it seems to consider charging me, then thinks better of it. When it trots away, it moves powerfully, smoothly, on spindly, graceful legs twice as long as a pigâs, and vanishes into the trees.
I climb back into our VW van, tingling all over. The sighting bodes well. Iâve come to what is being dubbed Europeâs largest wildlife refuge in early July, when I knew spotting animals wouldnât be so easy. (Winter, with its scarcity of food and lack of foliage, makes them more visible.) And within a couple of hours Iâve ticked a wild boar off the list. Maybe luck is on our side.
But luck isnât our only obstacle to wildlife spotting here. This is northern Ukraineâs Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a huge area, some 60 miles across in places, thatâs been off-limits to human habitation since 1986. Even now, nineteen years after the collapse of the USSR, nothing happens in this former Soviet republic without sheets of paper typed and stamped in quintuplicate. It took months of e-mails and phone calls to get permission to spend a few days here. Yes, weâre only a couple of foreign vagabondsâphotographer Rory Carnegie is an old travel buddy of mine from Englandâbut we have cameras and a telephoto lens, and my notepad has lines in it: obviously weâre spies. The Soviet Union may have died, but the Soviet mind-set has not.
At the Chernobyl Center, a kind of makeshift reception building in the heart of the old town, I had to hand over a solid 9 inches of local billsâhryvnia, pronounced approximately like the sound of a cardsharp riffling a deckâsign a stack of agreements, compliances, and receipts, and then get checked on an
Austin Powers
âstyle Geiger counter made out of chrome. Finally, under the protection of a guide, a driver, and an interpreter, we were free to set off into the zoneâas long as we did exactly what our guide said.
A handful of dilapidated roads cross the zone, half overgrown with weeds and grasses, and the whole area is littered with pockets of intense radiation, but nature doesnât seem to mind. All nature seems to care about is that the people, along with their domestic animals, are for the most part gone. The zone is reverting to one big, untamed forest, and it all sounds like a fantastic success story for nature: remove the humans and the wilderness bounces right back. Lured by tales of mammals unknown in Europe since the Dark Ages, weâre setting out on an atomic safari.
Â
It was soon after 1 A.M. on the night of April 26, 1986, that one of the worldâs nightmare scenarios unfolded. Reactor 4 in the huge Chernobyl power station blew up. The causes are still the subject of debate, but it was some combination of a design flaw involving the control rods that regulate reactor power levels, a poorly trained engineering crew, a test that required a power-down of the reactor, and a dogged old-style Soviet boss who refused to believe anything major could be wrong. At any rate, it was spectacular. Eight-hundred-pound cubes of lead
HENRY SHUKMAN
Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden
FROM
Outside
Â
T HE WILD BOAR is standing 30 or 40 yards away, at the bottom of a grassy bank, staring right at me. Even from this distance I can see its outrageously long snout, its giant pointed ears, and the spiny bristles along its back. It looks part porcupine, a number of shades of ocher and gray. And itâs far bigger than I expected, maybe chest-high to a man. The boar is like some minor forest god straight from the wilderness, gazing wild-eyed at the strange spectacle of a human being. For a moment it seems to consider charging me, then thinks better of it. When it trots away, it moves powerfully, smoothly, on spindly, graceful legs twice as long as a pigâs, and vanishes into the trees.
I climb back into our VW van, tingling all over. The sighting bodes well. Iâve come to what is being dubbed Europeâs largest wildlife refuge in early July, when I knew spotting animals wouldnât be so easy. (Winter, with its scarcity of food and lack of foliage, makes them more visible.) And within a couple of hours Iâve ticked a wild boar off the list. Maybe luck is on our side.
But luck isnât our only obstacle to wildlife spotting here. This is northern Ukraineâs Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a huge area, some 60 miles across in places, thatâs been off-limits to human habitation since 1986. Even now, nineteen years after the collapse of the USSR, nothing happens in this former Soviet republic without sheets of paper typed and stamped in quintuplicate. It took months of e-mails and phone calls to get permission to spend a few days here. Yes, weâre only a couple of foreign vagabondsâphotographer Rory Carnegie is an old travel buddy of mine from Englandâbut we have cameras and a telephoto lens, and my notepad has lines in it: obviously weâre spies. The Soviet Union may have died, but the Soviet mind-set has not.
At the Chernobyl Center, a kind of makeshift reception building in the heart of the old town, I had to hand over a solid 9 inches of local billsâhryvnia, pronounced approximately like the sound of a cardsharp riffling a deckâsign a stack of agreements, compliances, and receipts, and then get checked on an
Austin Powers
âstyle Geiger counter made out of chrome. Finally, under the protection of a guide, a driver, and an interpreter, we were free to set off into the zoneâas long as we did exactly what our guide said.
A handful of dilapidated roads cross the zone, half overgrown with weeds and grasses, and the whole area is littered with pockets of intense radiation, but nature doesnât seem to mind. All nature seems to care about is that the people, along with their domestic animals, are for the most part gone. The zone is reverting to one big, untamed forest, and it all sounds like a fantastic success story for nature: remove the humans and the wilderness bounces right back. Lured by tales of mammals unknown in Europe since the Dark Ages, weâre setting out on an atomic safari.
Â
It was soon after 1 A.M. on the night of April 26, 1986, that one of the worldâs nightmare scenarios unfolded. Reactor 4 in the huge Chernobyl power station blew up. The causes are still the subject of debate, but it was some combination of a design flaw involving the control rods that regulate reactor power levels, a poorly trained engineering crew, a test that required a power-down of the reactor, and a dogged old-style Soviet boss who refused to believe anything major could be wrong. At any rate, it was spectacular. Eight-hundred-pound cubes of lead
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