A Walk in the Woods

way back to the car I passed a public library and impulsively popped in to ask if they had
any information on Centralia.
They did--three fat files bulging with newspaper and magazine clippings, most dating
from 1979--1981, when Centralia briefly attracted national attention, particularly after the
little boy, one Todd Dombowski, was nearly swallowed by the earth in his granny's
backyard.
There was also, poignantly now, a slender, hardbound history of Centralia, prepared to
mark the town's centenary just before the outbreak of the fire. It was full of photographs
showing a bustling town not at all unlike the one that stood just outside the library door,
but with the difference of thirty-some years. I had forgotten just how distant the 1960s
have grown. All the men in the photographs wore hats; the women and girls were in
billowy skirts. All, of course, were happily unaware that their pleasant, anonymous town
was quite doomed. It was nearly impossible to connect the busy place in the photographs
to the empty space from which I had just come. As I put the things back in their folders, a
clipping fluttered to the floor. It was an article from Newsweek. Someone had underlined
a short paragraph towards the end of the article and put three exclamation marks in the
margin. It was a quote from a mine fire authority observing that if the rate of burning
held steady, there was enough coal under Centralia to burn for a thousand years.
It happened that a few miles beyond Centralia there was another scene of arresting
devastation that I had heard about and was keen to investigate--a mountainside in the
Lehigh Valley that had been so lavishly polluted by a zinc mill that it had been entirely
stripped of vegetation. I had heard about it from John Connolly, who recalled it as being
near Palmerton, so I drove there the following morning. Palmerton was a good-sized
town, grimy and industrial but not without its finer points--a couple of solid turn-of-the-
century civic buildings that gave it an air of consequence, a dignified central square, and a
business district that was clearly depressed but gamely clinging to life. The background
was dominated everywhere by big, prisonlike factories, all of which appeared to be shut.
At one end of town, I spotted what I had come to find--a steep, broad eminence, perhaps
1,500 feet high and several miles long, which was almost entirely naked of vegetation.
There was a parking lot beside the road and a factory a hundred yards or so beyond. I
pulled into the lot and got out to gawk--it truly was a sight.
As I stood there, some fat guy in a uniform stepped out of a security booth and
waddled towards me looking cross and officious.
"The hell you think you're doing?" he barked.
"Pardon me?" I replied, taken aback, and then: "I'm looking at that hill."
"You can't do that."
"I can't look at a hill?"
"Not here you can't. This is private property."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"Well, it's private--like the sign says." He indicated a post that was in fact signless and
looked momentarily struck. "Well, it's private," he added.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know," I said again, not appreciating yet how keenly this man took
his responsibilities. I was still marveling at the hill. "That's an amazing sight, isn't it?" I
said.
"What is?"