Spoil Tips

Grey-black cones of slag and spoil rise above the town, steep, raw and still growing, set hard against green alpine slopes. Up the side of the newest heap runs a narrow slag railway, ending at a tipping ramp. At dusk the tip-cars pour their load and molten orange runs down the black face, smoking where it lands. Older heaps further along have softened into grassed hills, patched with thin turf, scrub and scattered scrap. Bent rails stick out of them. Ash everywhere. An abandoned winding engine lies on its side in the ash, half rusted through. Dust on the newer tips is streaked with crystals of an odd pink-violet. Along one edge a line of painted wooden stakes marks a boundary, and the spoil has already spilled well past it. Further up, a dry-stone wall disappears under the heap, and the shingle roof of a small hut sticks out of the grey like a hat left on the ground. Beyond the stakes the pasture is a hard fresh green, going blue with evening. Smoke hangs over all of it.