This chapter discusses the ecological and social consequences of mining in eastern Estonia, a region affected by a century of extractivist activity. The irreversible destruction of the natural landscape of Ida-Virumaa evidences the mineral, logistic, and military character of Soviet modernity but also of the Anthropocene overall, which presents resource exploitation as an inevitable element of progress and civilization. The research comprised a series of ethnographic experiments exploring the tension between the gestures of extracting and depositing. In order to make the alienating reality of mining analytically available to the senses, I created two art installations blurring the boundaries between nature and culture and between matter and telling. The experimental gesture allowed me to make room for the ephemeral, fragile and precarious to emerge, while making the infrastructural harm of extractivist industries perceptible through storied matter.