The decaying infrastructure Easton describes in their internal narration functions as a recurring motif that reinforces The Human Cost of Extractive Industry. As Easton travels toward Hollow Elk Mine, they notice the impacts of mining activity:

The landscape was spectacular, the hills covered in ranks of trees that blazed the colors of madness, all red and gold and an astonishing shade of pink. And then you’d hit a valley and suddenly everything would be stripped away, the trees toppled, the earth scarred with tracks and great scaffolds of machinery, billows of smoke rising from the pumps that kept the miners from suffocating or drowning or both. And next to that would be a ramshackle little town of a sort I’d seen before, the kind that is kept from being a slum by the sheer willpower of the people who live there (27).

The juxtaposition between areas of natural beauty and areas of mining activity establishes extraction as harmful to both the land and the community. The machinery that prevents miners from “suffocating or drowning” emphasizes the inherent danger of the mining industry, while the “ramshackle little town” suggests economic vulnerability.

The motif recurs when Easton and the others arrive at Hollow Elk Mine. The buildings surrounding the mine have been abandoned and left to deteriorate following the closure of the mine. The empty buildings and dilapidation reflect abandonment once the mine was no longer profitable. A similar pattern appears in the shacks outside Flatwood where Elijah and Roger live. Easton describes the town as “the remains of a company town from another failed mining venture,” where “everything of use to the company had been stripped out, leaving dozens of small, weathered buildings that leaned together at odd angles, as if for warmth” (47). The phrasing emphasizes extraction followed by abandonment.

Through these repeated images of abandoned buildings and struggling towns, the motif of decaying infrastructure demonstrates the long-term instability created by extractive industry. However, characters such as Elijah underscore community resilience, positioning connection as a stabilizing force within the exploited environment.