Emerald Pioneer Camp
A painted cottage in the Emerald Camp, abandoned after the Chornobyl disaster
Updated April 19, 2020 | By Matthew Christopher
Camp Izumrudnoe, or Emerald Pioneer Camp in English, was a summer camp for Soviet children located just outside Prypiat, along the bank of the river near the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station's cooling lake. With roughly 100 cabins, swings, slides, a cinema, and a canteen, Emerald Camp seems like it would have been a great getaway. The highlight of the property was undoubtedly the ubiquitous paintings of 'cartoon heroes', as my guide Misha charmingly called them: Peter the Wolf, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and many more. The paintings were all different, and showed a degree of humanity and love that often gets overshadowed by the nuclear catastrophe that followed. It was clear that a lot of thought and effort had been put into making Emerald Camp somewhere visiting kids would feel happy, safe, and at home.
Emerald Pioneer Camp was abandoned in 1986 as a result of the meltdown at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station, but it was used by liquidators while they were working on cleaning up the aftermath. It must have been a sad and surreal experience for them, staying in a place so gentle and cheery while dealing with a reality that was the exact opposite.
My visit to Emerald Camp was in October 2019, at the tail end of a five day sprint through the highlights of the exclusion zone. Time was always a challenge: Misha was always gently nudging me to move faster since there was always more to see, but I prefer to work slowly and methodically and my work suffers when I don't. I had barely 45 minutes at Emerald Camp when I could have spent the majority of a day, and a fair amount of it was trying to free myself from sticky, bug-encrusted spider webs that kept getting in my face, hair, clothes, and camera gear.
Paintings of deer and a tiger adorn one of Emerald Camp's cottages
If you don't go to places like this, the concept of loving them may seem strange, but I assure you, it is real. I would argue that you can't take a moving image without loving a place. You share a bond with it, for a brief time, and it becomes a part of your heart. I loved the forest (except the spider webs). I loved the sweet paintings. I loved the light, the echoes of the care in the places, the intimate glimpse into something you just don't hear about or see much. I loved experiencing it unfiltered. It was a magical place. I couldn't wait to go back! I would have found every painting and taken a photo of each one, just for the record. In case of a fire. I didn't get to. I just ran through it and did a (in my opinion) halfass job.
In the massive fire that ripped through the Chornobyl area in April 2020 Emerald Camp was one of the casualties, razed to the ground with barely any trace of its existence left. I could have done a much better job with more time and I just didn't have it. I know that's not my fault. But it makes me so, so angry at myself anyway. I still feel like I should have done more. I'm furious at the person who started the fire, and unendingly sad because it's such a stupid, senseless loss.
It's not my place, I didn't own it - but in a way, nobody and everybody did. It was there for everyone to see and experience. I know it's so much worse for the people who knew it better like Misha, but it still physically hurts when I think about it. Places are a part of who we are. They help us form and retain memories - think of how revisiting a childhood haunt jars loose forgotten moments. When a place that meant something to you is erased, it erases a part of you. All you have now is a hole where they used to be. It's part of my job. All of these places I visit are on the edge of the abyss and you just watch them slide in, one by one. I work in the palliative care unit for buildings. I should be used to it but I never get there and it makes me sick to lose them every single time.
Despite fading and peeling over time, the paintings were still vibrant and enchanting
We act like sorrow is a problem to be solved so we can go on our way having fixed it, but I don't think it works that way. Just like our joys, we carry it with us and it becomes part of who we are. You can't lose the sorrow without also losing the love for what is gone. That's what I chose for myself, I guess: to be a collector of sorrows. Each photo is a little portal you can stare at them through, a window to a moment that was for me a joy because I feel at home in places where the hurt is out in the open. I hate to see them go. I hate that this fire has claimed as much as it has. I mourn the loss for the people of Ukraine, and I hope with all my heart that the aftermath of the fire doesn't visit another horror on an area that was in small ways healing - an enchanting area, despite our misconceptions of it. I hope we get to see the people and places we lose again someday, whether in this world or whatever comes next. I'd like to sit in Emerald Camp on a sunny afternoon and watch the wildlife, listen to the sound of the wind in the trees, and get to know it better.
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