A generation is watching the Attica it knew disappear

One of my favorite pastimes is to photograph the countryside, forests and greenery near the city in the phase of regeneration following a large blaze. Few things are more beautiful in this life than the image of a cluster of small pines emerging where only a few months ago ash and burnt trees remained.

Millions of such new or much older pines aged 10 or 15 years were swept away in the most recent megafire that burned from Varnavas to Mount Penteli, destroying large areas of woodland circling the Attica Basin.

Burned again, after 2009

These reservoirs of greenery in Varnavas, Grammatiko and Marathon had managed to recover after the great fire of 2009, which unfortunately had also extended toward Penteli, reaching as far as Pikermi and Pallini, in East Attica.

But if it was only the agricultural and forested areas of the plain of Marathon and even...