Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story, based on a photoprompt, with a beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or less. Post it on your blog, and include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!
PHOTO PROMPT © ALICIA JAMTAAS
New Life
The last of the wagons rumbled to a halt, discharged its ore, and sat, dirty and empty.
The last of the ore spilled from the conveyor into the furnace with a gout of sooty sparks.
The last of the molten metal was cast and the ingots trucked out.
Two men secured the gates with thick chains and heavy padlocks, and drove away.
The site was left; it wasn’t worth salvaging.
A whippoorwill came. Fireweed flourished. Brambles straggled over the buildings. Saplings shaded the wagon tracks even as they destroyed them.
New life!
Nothing grew on the spoil tips.
Ever.
Autumn Leaves 
A timely warning, Penny
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Not thirty miles from where I live, there are spoilt tips that are at least 150 years old. They’re black and completely lifeless.
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The finality of the final words is very powerful Penny. I hope nature will find a way, it usually does.
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Thank you for your kind comment. Given long enough, regeneration will happen. Nature wins!
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Coal train traffic has increased here in Bellingham, WA over the past few years. Ugliness followed. Great take on the prompt.
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Thank you for reading and for your kind comment. Your news about coal train traffic saddens me. Great prompt!
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People are still protesting, hoping to slow down the process. We’ll see. One nice thing is that a few coal train tracks end on the Lummi Reservation and they have refused access.
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nature can only take so much abuse from humans, then it exacts its revenge.
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Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I always rejoice when I see nature taking over from industry!
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The ending was chilling. Nature can be destroyed, permanently. But thank God for the new life!
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Thank you for such a kind comment. I’m delighted you found the ending chilling. Yes, thank God for new life – I just wish we were better stewards of it…
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I admit I had no idea what spoil tip was. I like to think eventually nature will take over…
Lovely write, Penny!
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Thank you for your kind comment, Dale. Yes, it’s good to see the way nature reclaims after man has spoiled. xx
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😊 xo
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Mother Nature always reclaims. It’s fascinating how well some things last.
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Thank you for your kind comment. Mother Nature is very powerful – let’s not push her too far, eh?
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A powerful little story Penny, generated mixed feelings of hope and despair.
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Thank you for your very kind comments, Sandra. I’m delighted that the mixed feelings came across.
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Dear Penny,
Wow. Simply wow. Your descriptions are fantastic. The message is clear, if not disturbing. Destructive humans, once more, leaving their mark.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Dear Rochelle
I’m blushing! Thank you for such fulsome praise. I guess the descriptions are true to life because I’ve seen a number of big industrial sites close. Nowadays in the UK we’re quite fierce about making companies clean up when they close, but that hasn’t always been the case.
Shalom
Penny
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Nature reclaiming, but not everything…Much food for thought. And I also looked up whippoorwill!
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Thank you for your lovely comments. Nice to hear you looked up whippoorwill! There are all sorts of superstitions about that bird, I believe. It’s sometimes viewed as a harbinger of death.
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Very compelling well-written images. It made me remember watching a post-apocalyptic movie where nature had half-buried a town. We were in a theater in that town and the whole audience broke into applause! 😀 maybe there’s hope for us yet.
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I’m so glad you liked the story. Your anecdote about the theatre audience applauding is encouraging.
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We humans have a way of destroying our environment, when we are supposed to be the caretakers of it. It’s very sad. A powerful story and so well done, as always, Penny!
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Yes, our stewardship of the environment leaves a lot to be desired, I’m afraid. Thank you for your kind comment.
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It is amazing how vegetation always reclaims the area, slowly and surly until the past is buried.
You story is a great reminder of how nothing stands still.
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Vegetation usually wins – but not always. The spoil tips to which I refer are real, and nothing has grown on them in the 150 years since they were last used. Thank you for your kind comment.
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It’s almost as if we are challenging Mother Nature sometimes. She usually wins in the end but for how much longer I wonder.
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Thanks for commenting, Keith. I suspect we have he upper hand over Mother Nature now. Let’s hope we use our power wisely…
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Oh man, I was reading a book set in/near a coal-mining town (the main character mercifully gets rescued by her aunt, but I was only about a third of the way in before I had to return it to the library, so I haven’t got much past the coal mine part.) It’s called Jolene by Mercedes Lackey. They were talking about this town called Duckworth, Tennessee. I had to look it up to see if it was that bad – and it was. At the same time, the main point is: there is magic (literally it is the 15th in a series about powerful magic users) in the world as an escape/critique of society/invitation to think of other ways of being and how people get stuck in these terrible situations. Anyway, you made me remember to go put that book on hold again! So much deep thoughts here all in such a compact space. Thank you for sharing.
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Thank you for your thoughtful comment about the deep thoughts in a compact space. Enjoy “Jolene”!
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Very fluid writing, Penny.
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My mind, reading your story, floated off into imagining people from the far future exploring the ruins of today’s civilization, shaking their heads at what we thought was so inventive and would never die 🙂
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I love fireweed, it has a magical note for me.
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