It’s been a good few months since my last visit to Elvion, so when Cube Republic sent me a link to an image showing the region’s current iteration, I realised it was high time I dropped in again.
The work of region holders Bo Zano (BoZanoNL) and his SL/RL partner, Una Zano (UnaMayLi), Elvion has tended to shift between Homestead and Full regions, but whichever it has occupied, it has never failed to offer settings of intrinsic natural beauty rich in detail and thoroughly photogenic.
Most often the builds are focus on very pastoral settings, rich in flora and fauna, and sometimes with a lean towards fantasy environments. Some iterations, however, have at times touch on more rural environments – such as with the design the couple presented back towards the start of 2023 (see: Elvion’s coastal retreat in Second Life). With the September iteration, Bo and Una take the region in another direction, offering a setting reflecting the ecological threat of climate change / global warming and the effect it is set to have on the likes of coastal cities and towns.
With rising global temperatures cities become less habitable. Nature is taking back and people are migrating to the country. Except some, who find peace and see the beauty.
– Elvion About Land
However, this shouldn’t be taken to mean this current iteration of Elvion is in any way a treatise on the threat of climate change and rising sea levels. Rather it is a visual ode to the fact that nature has a way of taking care of her own and redressing the balance when it comes to humanity’s claims on the land, even after those claims may have resulted in the land being ravaged beyond hope.
Elvion, September 2023The core of the build suggests the outskirts of a city or town, probably coastal in nature, and where an elevated freeway once provided rapid access to the heart of the conurbation without a lot of tedious mucking about navigating the gridwork of edge-of-town streets or dealing with locals, the broad lanes of the road instead being raised away from all that to run alongside the rail tracks which once carried goods trains on their backs.
However, the traffic carrying days of both rail and road have long passed; the freeway is in almost total collapse, the rail lines similarly broken and incapable of carrying. Even the buildings rising above or visible from the elevated roadway have clearly been long deserted, with some showing signs of being close to joining some of their brethren in collapse. At ground level, streets have largely vanished, becoming overgrown with weeds and grasses or lost under pools and channels where water has naturally taken command.
Exactly what has happened here is open to interpretation. Did the sea levels rise sufficiently to start drowning the town, resulting in its abandonment? Did it suffer the battering force of one or more hurricanes or typhoons so severe, abandonment rather than recovery was seen to be the only sensible option? was it broken by the force of a tsunami which originated across the seas but spent its fury here? The story is yours to decide.
What does appear to be clear is that whatever happened, it occurred long enough ago for Nature engage in the long, slow process of reclamation, and is now a good way along that path. The hardtop of roads and parking lots is being taken over by weeds and grass; vines hang from the sides of shops and the barriers guarding the edge of elevated road sections; a children’s play area is now little more than a rusted hulk, its tone matching the majority of the remaining vehicles scattered throughout – some of which are sprinkled across the freeway as if they were, for whatever reason, deserted in a rush by owners and passengers alike.
Elsewhere the presence of water along some of the depressions caused by former roads is such that little island have had time to be established and freshwater ponds form, offering homes for a range of waterfowl and wildlife. Even the wrecks of vehicles have become so accepted that they are now little more than perches from which heron can watch for signs of passing fish in the waters around them. Bear and beaver are equally at home here now, as are deer, whilst geese find the setting more than acceptable as a stop-over during their long migration flights.
Also scattered throughout the setting are signs that not everyone has fled this place; to the south, for example, someone has created a little homestead for themselves. A wind turbine provides lighting for the simple shack, chickens and goats are being reared, horses looked after (including one that will rez rideable copies of itself, and a canoe is kept in good order, presumably for fishing trips.
This is not the only sign of human habitation. Elsewhere, someone has built a raft while boardwalks and decks and scattered around on and over the waters, and at least one tree appears to have been felled to create a makeshift bridge over a water channel. But whether this is all the work of those living at the homestead, or whether it speaks to a little community of people holding-out among the ruins is for you to decide. And given there are these signs of habitation, so too can be found places to sit and pass the time, and appreciate the beauty of the setting.
As always with Elvion, there is a tremendous amount to see and appreciate with this build; far more than either my wittering here or meagre images herein can convey. As such, and as always, a visit is highly recommended.
SLurl Details
- Elvion (rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 