I’ve been traveling across low, rolling hills for the last few days. There are no trees here, but at times I find myself wading through seas of waist-high grass. I would have expected cows to have overtaken places like this, but instead the buffalo have made a comeback. Maybe the long winter did the cattle in, like so many other things. Maybe it was the wolves, who have reclaimed their old territories. Sometimes at night I hear their howling, but they have no interest in me. I pass a herd of buffalo in the distance, but avoid them. Humanity is gone, but the rest of nature is thriving in this new spring. Small birds flit past me, larger ones circling high above, and in the heat of the day I hear the drone of insects. In the night, I listen to the chirping of crickets, the whine of cicadas.

As the early morning fog begins to lift, I realize I have stumbled upon the remains of a wind farm. The skeletons of the turbines loom out of the mist around me, impossibly massive. I have never felt so small before, even among the ruins of skyscrapers. There is something comfortingly human and familiar about a city, a quality that lingers even in a broken one, but these structures are a colossal strangeness, their half-hidden shapes slowly emerging from the obscuring haze.

As the sun burns the fog away, I see the ruins more clearly. Most of the turbines have fallen, and the few that remain standing are massive pillars, the tops broken off, their blades lost. They are cracked and corroded, huge holes torn in their sides. Dirt has sifted in, and plants taken advantage of the shelter, tiny forests held within these decaying skeletons. Others turbines and fallen towers are buried completely, leaving nothing but long, low hills for me to climb over.

A strong wind sweeps across this whole area, and must have done so for a long time if the turbines were put here. I wonder how many buried structures I have passed already. How many of these hills hide ruins beneath their slopes? Nature is reclaiming humanity’s works. The wind and sun and rain gradually smooth the edges off of everything. Even me.

I was so scared and angry in the beginning. At what had been done to me, to the world. I kept searching for someone to blame. For someone to tell me what to do. For someone, anyone, still alive. I looked for survivors, I looked for reasons, I looked for answers. And all I found was ruins. I found broken cities and quiet forests and soft rains that slowly, slowly washed the ash away. And as little by little spring reclaimed the land, I found a new purpose. And I kept looking, but differently now.

I don’t blame humanity for dying. I don’t even blame them for leaving me here, to bear witness. In the cool morning sunlight, I walk through the hills of the wind farm, the turbines that were supposed to fix everything but could never be enough, and I feel gratitude for time and nature that wear everything smooth. Some wounds can’t heal, but they fade.