This is my last post from a quieted mining island. Even now, when I'm writing this post at home and listening to some melancholic music, the photos and memories from there are giving me shivers. I'm thinking about the soundscape of the island - how in the beginning it was very silent, then suddenly full of explosions and mining sounds. When the mine was closed and the military started practising, the island became filled with gunshots and other sounds of war. Today the circle of sounds is closed and the island is silent again excluding occasional voices of birds and other nature. I wonder how the next phase of sounds will be.
Last buildings we explored were full of marks of military practise. Some of the walls were decorated with bullet holes and some had been eaten by explosives. Walking on the floors with sneakers was like a Russian roulette - we tried our best to avoid hidden holes, rusty nails and other traps. Almost every other step glass from the broken windows was screeching under my feet.
It was beautiful to see how nature was slowly taking over old buildings. Little tree seeds had miraculously grown through the floors and formed a touching garden in the middle of a barbed wire and sandbags. There was an abandoned swallow nest in a hole of the wall and moss blankets on the rooftops. I found a collection of flat stones on the window sill and got lost in wondering who had made it and when. For me it was a warm greeting from an inscrutable past.
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