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A review by boxcar
Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn
4.5
Such a striking concept for a book. Great writing, poetic in parts, and a nice choice of locations. Inevitably tied up and ensnared within climate change and the Anthropocene—how could it not be? It’s irksome, if necessary, that each (modern) travel book, nature book, is so intimately conjoined with humanity’s suicidal-homicide of the natural world. Irksome is not the right term, especially given how aware of that premise I was for this book. Places abandoned by humans. Post-Human landscape. You get it.
The variety of locations was stunning. Island with rewilded feral cows off scotland, montserrat’s ash drowned once-paradise, Chernobyl (what more needs said there), American urban blight—-and in all of these ransacked, fallen and desolate places, there is hope. A sapling eking skyward, a wolf’s howl piercing the once silent night. A glimmer of resilience, of the ability to move forward, regardless of how far back nature had been wrenched. That’s only once we leave though. And man, we’re not really leaving, are we?
An attempt at hope that works in moments. Depressing usually. Less so than other books on the topic. That’s something. A glimmer of hope sputtering in a vat of grimy dread is proof that we have not been rendered hopeless.
The variety of locations was stunning. Island with rewilded feral cows off scotland, montserrat’s ash drowned once-paradise, Chernobyl (what more needs said there), American urban blight—-and in all of these ransacked, fallen and desolate places, there is hope. A sapling eking skyward, a wolf’s howl piercing the once silent night. A glimmer of resilience, of the ability to move forward, regardless of how far back nature had been wrenched. That’s only once we leave though. And man, we’re not really leaving, are we?
An attempt at hope that works in moments. Depressing usually. Less so than other books on the topic. That’s something. A glimmer of hope sputtering in a vat of grimy dread is proof that we have not been rendered hopeless.