“This is Chernobyl, too”, someone posted on reddit, captioning a large radar-like installation. “Huh,” says I. A radar station? In the Zone? I’d never heard of such a thing. When I looked at its satellite footage, I noticed something nearby — Pripyat? No, not big enough. What was it? That was Chernobyl-2. Stealth-pun redditors for the win, I suppose.

The discussion thread which followed mentioned Stalking the Atomic City as a source for someone who’d spent time in Chernobyl-2, which was a military town servicing the radar station. It’s a hard day’s hike from what most people think of as Chernobyl, twenty miles or so. A “stalker” is a common name for people who enter and spend time in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone illicitly; they have no permission, and unlike official tourists, they’re not registered. What brings them there? To judge by Marikyan Kamysh’s account, they go there because it’s there — for the thrill of being where the law and good sense forbid them, or or being alone. There is something there that calls to their souls; Kamysh has made the trip over a thousand times, by his account.

The broader exclusion zone, off the tourist-beaten track, is a place of emptiness and nature’s severity; in one instant Kamysh wakes up to find that he spent the night in the same room as a wolf corpse that had been rotting slowly in the cold for ages. Kamysh’s excursions, which include time spent in radioactive areas he’s not aware or caring of — he carries no dosimeters — frequently seem pointless to me, as he literally breaks in several times a month to do rough sleeping in the woods or the military town of Chernobyl-2. (He avoids “wretched Prypyat”: it’s so touristy these days.) There’s a salient camaraderie between stalkers, though; while some come to be alone, they also enjoy camping out with one another and sharing snacks and vodka, the latter being explained as a drink that won’t freeze overnight. There’s an amusing hypocrisy here as he comments on the Zone slowly fading away as people continue to come and devour the abandoned buildings for salvage, even as he throws old chairs into his campfire during his multi-day stays in the Zone. (He also throws books in the fire after he’s looked them over which sets my teeth on edge even if they are math texts and communist politics.)

This was an interesting little book — a raw look into a place few go, and the writing has a strange attraction to it even when it’s vulgar. There were surprises here, too; Kamysh spends nights in an abandoned Orthodox church, when I assumed the Soviets were aggressively anti-Christian, and he has his most dangerous wildlife encounter not in the wilds but in a village where a lynx mother had turned a vacant house into her den.

Quotations

The Dead City. Dead, oh yes. Twice dead. For the second time, with the emergence of thousands of photos and the shitty lines of official tours. Bored hipsters shot Prypyat dead with their expensive cameras; rich girls from the capital soiled the rotten couches with their tattooed backs and mapped every nook of the terra incognita on Instagram. The sense of mystery has been lost; it has escaped, vanished in the web. The aura of mysticism was scattered like ash in all directions, flying through the Internet byways to distant foreign lands. After that, abandoned apartments can’t be scary.

Day three here, and it seems that the murk has deliberately spread its sullen skirts and pressed down on you with its cold clouds and drizzle. It wraps cotton balls of a morning fog around your throat and goads you with the whips of thirst through the bushes toward downtown. It goads you through the dew and wasteland toward the well-trodden stairs of the pier. I’ll fill up my plastic bottles there and guzzle this metal-flavored liquid without worrying about the harm it can do. It’s pouring outside. I fidget on the couch, listening to music through one ear pod, pull out my sleeping bag, and crawl as deep inside it as possible. The battery dies faster than the sun sets, hidden by the clouds and wrapped in a hundred layers of fall mist. I’m sitting like this with the balcony doors open, listening to raindrops pattering, wild boars padding around, listening to the rain, silence, distant metal banging, and the screams of illegal tourists.

The calm and peace that my soul needs are here; I hate thinking about going back. I’d better go look for some old books in the classrooms of the local schools. Otherwise, I’ll fly off the handle and stay here to write insane monologues and magic spells in forgotten languages with charcoal on the walls.