One evening as the sun was setting I said to my sister.

One evening as the sun was setting I sat to my sister Nina come on let's go and pick

mushrooms good mushrooms for soup so into the forest we went. We didn't walk far.

That's what to walk there is.

Then I saw a wolf running towards us, as near as that do is from us now.

My hands froze around the knife.

I tried to hide behind the pine tree but suddenly a tweak snapped, snapped under my foot.

Galena aged about 90 is sitting in the porch of her tiny cottage in the village of Ivanovka,

telling tales of her childhood in what we call the Chernobyl zone,

but she would call Polessia, the part of southern Belarus

that blends into northern Ukraine.

Vacuum staled in the middle, and I was my reign. The wolf stopped and looked at me. I froze as though as I died already and so did the wolf gazing at me and then it ran past.

I went to find my sister and saw a second wolf running. I stopped and my fear disappeared.

We lived among the

the wolves. Eggs, wild boas, foxes, that's how it was on those days. I'm Monica Whitlock and for assignment on the BBC World Service I'm in Southern Belarus

learning what has become of that wild world in which Galena grew up. A generation

has passed since the nuclear power station near Chernobyl exploded in 1986 and the human

population removed on a warlike scale. Scientists report that wild creatures like wolves and elks and eagles are returning to the area.

How might they be affected by their strange habitat?

And what does their presence tell us about the state of the land?

You'd never guess that Ivanovka was once home to a thousand people.

Galina's tiny house, bright with chrysanthemums and dahlias,

...