Etna (cont'd)

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Also, these summit craters that continuously smoke and smolder (if you were allowed to climb up on a craters, you could look into it and see molten lava boiling around about 50 meters down) are not really dangerous. They spew ash up regularly and lava flows fairly frequently, but it's more of a nuisance than anything. Lava flows that occur way the heck up here don't threaten much more than the guides' hut-cum-bar (which has been destroyed and rebuilt several times).

It is the eruptive system all around the mountain that poses danger to the surrounding towns and cities. Lateral cones — of which there are about 500 eerily littering the surrounding slopes and area — as well as side vents, tangential lava flows, and lower-slope eruptions can occur at any point throughout the region at the drop of the proverbial hat, with little forewarning and not much anyone can do but run like hell.

In fact, this happens rather regularly. The chair lift I rode up was the seventh built since 1980. The twisted, rusting remains of previous cable car pylons poke out of lava flows all around where the current one runs. Theoretically, given the extent of the underlying volcanic system, a crater could erupt in downtown Catania.

Also, you know how on every other mountain the "snow line" defines the limit above which snow remains throughout most of the year? Not on Etna. The top of the mountain is a landscape of gaseous microfissures and other phenomenon that sound like medical conditions you don't want to get. These create a ground bed so warm that the "snow line" on Etna refers to the point above which snow doesn't stick.

The next day, in Taormina, I decide to have a light lunch by the swimming pool of my hotel. And there's this granular black stuff all over the table, placemat, silverware, etc. I glare up at the offending trees hanging low over the dining area and wonder why they feel the need to pollinate my lunch. I try to eat quickly before my food gets too contaminated, covering my water glass with the second section of the newspaper when not actively drinking from it (the glass, not the paper). Fine.

Walking around later, I absently scratch at my head, and notice my scalp is kind of gritty, even though I shampooed it this morning. Darn trees and their black stuff. Then I am touring the umpteenth hotel (one I really like loads and will definitely make my personal place to stay in town) and sit down at a little table in the garden under hanging bougainvillea to chat with the husband owner while the wife owner goes inside to get me some of her homemade chocolate gelato.

And there's that black stuff again — I am, after all, in luxuriant gardens, though — so, a bit annoyed, I brush it off my clipboard and wonder what sort of plant molting season this is. Wife comes back out and she takes over the conversation. She, too, brushes the black sandy stuff off the corner of the table before resting her arms on it. "Etna's cranky again today," she remarks absently as she does so.

Etna? Yes, black stuff not from trees. Black stuff ash from that volcanic system of which I just spake, the now-distant craters apparently much more active this morning than they were yesterday when I ascended. "This isn't bad, though," she confided. "In July, there was ash up to here," she places her open palm about four inches off the terrace pavement. "Guests came out with the extra brooms to help me clear it all off."

Taormina is some 50 kilometers north of Etna. I'm definitely not going to be around next time the horizon-hulking mountain blows its lid.

Copyright © 1998 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.