For all the vivid drama provided intentionally or not by the hulking sugar mill, with its looming stacks and white plumes, during its operation, its post-shutdown appearance is much reduced.  It nows seems merely a banal collection of rusty and red-dusted corrugated sheet metal and piping, much lessened in importance and stature.  It seems smaller now, less imposing. Less vital.  No longer straining industrially, it seems inclined to deteriorate listlessly back into the red soil surrounding it.

Here are some recent photos to compare with those from last November as posted in my blog entry of April 6, 2017.

Now the mill is boring, quiet, diminished.  Nearby is a parked cane-hauler, 15-feet tall on eight-foot tires, now silent, no longer demonically roaring and trailing red dust beside the highway.  Bizarrely, the dried cane stalks still in the hauler imply skeletons, bleached bones and jointed limbs trying to escape, to go somewhere, perhaps back to the red earth?  Not to the mill.

The mill in operation.