On March 11, 2011 I began a post for this blog that was inspired by “Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden” by Henry Shukman for outsideonline.com. The abstract for Shukman’s article states:

Twenty-five years after the Soviet-era meltdown drove 60,000 people from their homes in the Ukraine, a rebirth is taking place inside the exclusion zone. With Geiger counter in hand, the author explores Europe’s strangest wildlife refuge, an enchanted postapocalyptic forest from which entirely new species may soon emerge.

I was moved to compare, as did Henry Shukman, the post-meltdown exclusion zone forest to the deep forest of Baba Yaga of Russian fairy tale fame.

The next day I looked at what I had written about the “new” primeval forest in the Ukraine, and I knew that the post would never be finished, not as it was. Some time later I reread Henry Shukman’s article and it seemed flippant to me in a way that it hadn’t the first time through. Yesterday I read “Life in the Zone” by Steve Featherstone in the June 2011 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Here is a brief passage from that piece:

Lately, Chernobyl’s reputation has undergone a peculiar transformation. In many articles that appear on its anniversary, the nightmare has changed to a comeback story. The Zone is no longer a wasteland, the story goes, but rather a lush wildlife refuge renewed by the irrepressible forces of nature. Eager to rebrand the Zone as Europe’s largest nature preserve, the Ukrainian government has introduced a small herd of endangered Przewalski’s horses to the Zone and has dabbled in niche tourism. End-times enthusiasts can now take day trips to the forbidden city of Pripyat, a postapocalyptic Disney World complete with a creepy amusement park and authentic Soviet-themed sets.

Steve Featherstone moved through the exclusion zone with a pair of evolutionary biologists (Anders Møller and Tim Mousseau of Paris-Sud University and the University of South Carolina, respectively), helping to conduct a long term study on the genetic changes of barn swallows in the region, all the while on the lookout for signs of mutation in plants and animals. Although at first glance Featherstone’s article promises to take an objective look at the true health of the exclusion zone forest, it is little more than an account of his brief time with the scientists, his guide, and some colorful moments among local people. Featherstone provides a snapshot of what is current and factual (but not terribly enlightening because so much about the exclusion zone forest is yet to be learned), while Henry Shukman’s Chernobyl piece is part mythmaking. Featherstone is sober, reflective; Shukman is excited, optimistic.

Both of these articles, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster and in the wake of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis, have encouraged me to consider the role of storytelling, as opposed to the reporting of facts, in such matters. Should we integrate these unfathomable tragedies into our stories, our legends, our myths? If so, when? And how? Is it helpful (or evasive) to compare the Ukrainian wilderness, which has somehow survived despite the radioactive soup in which every living thing in it continues to simmer and stew, to the primeval forest of Baba Yaga? Does such a comparison trivialize the tragedy? Should the abundance of wildlife in the region be celebrated when its future health is in doubt?

This is what Ursula K. LeGuin has to say on the matter:

And a person who had never listened to nor read a tale or myth or parable or story, would remain ignorant of his own emotional and spiritual heights and depths, would not know quite fully what it is to be human. For the story—from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace—is one of the basic tools invented by the mind of man, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. (From Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction)

I take from this that telling stories, including the ones we make up, is what we do. We can’t quit making stuff up. We won’t.

Baba Yaga is the crone, the dark goddess, mistress of death and destruction who also gives insight and life. She represents both life and death. Who else can we call upon to help us comprehend this unrestrained wilderness (damaged, perhaps irrevocably) in a place where she has reigned as head mythic crone for generations?