Mary Winston Nicklin

I’m standing ankle deep in Belgian mud. Above me, the skeleton of a red brick building looms against the gray sky. There are gaping holes in the roof, and patches of grass sprout from the walls. Beneath its concrete stilts, creeping vines have taken root. It’s almost bucolic. I look down at the small stone marker at my feet, a nondescript slab marking the mineshaft. It was here in 1879 that Vincent Van Gogh, then an evangelical pastor from the Netherlands, descended 2,300 feet underground into the Marcasse coal mine.

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