This weekend, I participated in a 5k walk to fight blindness. It was located at the Bethlehem Steel Stacks which is where Bethlehem Steel used to be located before it went out of business. It has been since renovated into a very nice facility, but the old structures are still all around and very cool to see (fun fact part of the first transformers film was filmed there).

Most of the old buildings are all falling apart and very rusted, but there are some that still stand proudly, striking impressive figures against the sky. Something else that accents this interesting look is the green that is slowly working its way back against the sea of red rust. While walking, I witnessed many plants, even trees sometimes, jutting out from the buildings many feet up in the air.

It was amazing to see these trees seemingly growing from nothing and flourishing. It speaks for how hardy nature is and how everything gets reclaimed by it sooner or later. A steel mill definitely was not the most environmentally friendly structure, and yet now, not that many years after it went out of business, the environment is slowly but surely reclaiming its land. And not only is it reclaiming it, it is adapting to it. The plants have access to higher up structures which give them better access to sunlight. There is more area (in the form of verticality) for plants to grow. It is fascinating to see this transition back to nature from a once industrialized area.

The split between nature and industry also strikes a cool dichotomy. As mentioned before, the color scheme between red and green is appealing in itself. But it also always surprising to see a patch of green perched haphazardly off the edge of a two story crumbling building or wrapping its way up a rusty old stairway. In time, the green will eventually take over and the red will succumb, but until then, the picture they paint is unforgettable.