"Good luck exploring the infinite abyss."

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this evening. The one night that I don't have a camera of any sort, I go somewhere and see something that very, very few people are ever able to see and something that I will never see again. The Brookwood Coal Mine. Yes, it's very controversial and it's bad for the BlackWarrior River. But, when you're wearing a vintage, olive green, metal hard hat and standing on a tall mound of rocks, looking down hundreds and hundreds of feet into what looks like a scene from a movie, for a fraction of a second the only thing on your mind is how incredible it is. Surrounded by mountains of coal, various rocks, gigantic bulldozers, trucks with 9 ft. tall wheels, dump trucks that are big enough to carry three large vans, and the metallic drilling sound of drills as large as dinosaurs, it was easily one of the coolest nights of my life. I probably sound like a nine year old boy and that's okay with me. After we passed around pieces of coal, stared down into the canyon for a while, and watched the mine workers bustle to and fro, we drove over to the "ponds". Even though these are man-made ponds in the middle of what used to be a ginormous crater like the one we were previously at, it was breathtakingly beautiful. After the men are finished drilling in an area, they cover it up, plant grass and trees on it, make some ponds, and try to make it look the way it did before they started their drilling. (This is impossible, by the way.)

At that point, my class and I were standing on top of a mound of gravel and looking out at huge man-made hills, covered with freshly planted grass and small, growing trees. In the middle of these hills, there were two small ponds and the sound of crickets and a bubbling brook could be heard in the distance. Surrounding this area were very old, tall trees with leaves of the most vibrant reds and oranges. This entire picture was tinted with a deep blueish pink from the setting sun (that we were facing). All bundled up in coats and scarves, sixteen college students, a Science teacher, one mine worker, and two museum curators watched the sun set together.

So, as much as I would like to think about the BlackWarrior River and the pollutants that are going in it at this very moment, I just can't. Not today. I can think about that tomorrow and the next day and the next. But for now, I have coal on my hands and a smudge of it on my right cheek. 

For now I'd rather think about that.