How nature would reclaim our homes

An interesting story in today's Trib about a book entitled "The World Around Us," in which author Alan Weisman details how nature will reclaim our homes and neighborhoods if we ever vanish off the face of the Earth.

"After we're gone, nature's revenge for our smug, mechanized superiority arrives waterborne. ... It begins on the roof, probably asphalt or slate shingle, warranted to last two or three decades — but that warranty doesn't count around the chimney where the first leak occurs."

"After 500 years, what is left depends on where in the world you lived. If the climate was temperate, a forest stands in place of a suburb; minus a few hills, it's begun to resemble what it was before developers, or the farmers they expropriated, first saw it. Amid the trees, half-concealed by a spreading understory, lie aluminum dishwasher parts and stainless steel cookware, their plastic handles splitting but still solid."



registration required, but there are the usual workarounds. A keeper article, imho.

How nature would reclaim our homes

An interesting story in today's Trib about a book entitled "The World Around Us," in which author Alan Weisman details how nature will reclaim our homes and neighborhoods if we ever vanish off the face of the Earth.

"After we're gone, nature's revenge for our smug, mechanized superiority arrives waterborne. ... It begins on the roof, probably asphalt or slate shingle, warranted to last two or three decades — but that warranty doesn't count around the chimney where the first leak occurs."

"After 500 years, what is left depends on where in the world you lived. If the climate was temperate, a forest stands in place of a suburb; minus a few hills, it's begun to resemble what it was before developers, or the farmers they expropriated, first saw it. Amid the trees, half-concealed by a spreading understory, lie aluminum dishwasher parts and stainless steel cookware, their plastic handles splitting but still solid."



registration required, but there are the usual workarounds. A keeper article, imho.