Etna 2000
by Marco Fulle
(written on 17 Feb 2000)
Five of us find ourselves at the Torre del Filosofo hut, after the sunset and the majestic Etna's shadow high over the Aspromonte have greeted us. It is almost dark, we are tormented by a violent icy mistral, which has dazed us during six long hours of waiting. The situation reminds me of that joke about an Italian a french an english and a German guy on an aeroplane. In fact we are on an ice-cold aeroplane, surrounded by the eternal inviting Sicilian summer, so that I ask myself: What are we doing here, in the ice? I am here with Tom, who is beginning his volcanological career, David, a perfectly equipped Welsh cameraman specialized in TV documentaries, Thorsten, a german freelance photographer, and a french madame, who seems a french madame, but who in reality is an angel descended from the heaven to herald the good tale. The good tale enchaining us in this windy icebox is that the South East Cone, majestically towering above us one km to the North, has been sleeping for more than 24 hours: when it will wake up, unprecedented exploits will happen.
David, as a rigorous professional man, has declared that he will not leave this place before the expected paroxysm is captured on film. I whisper to Tom: «This David is an unlucky charm, it is not so you can take Etna ...» We laugh heartily, we are now certain that soon we will escape the ice without having reached our goal. We begin to pack the rucksacks for the return trip, hoping for better luck in the next days, when the angel starts to talk with a more and more surprised Tom. I ask to Tom what is she saying, and he: «She says that a fumarole is increasing in strength within the fissure of the South East Cone, as was the case yesterday before the last paroxysm». I look at that, but my expert eye does not detect anything new. «And how much time till this parox?» Tom again confers with the ecstatic angel, then he incredulous turns to me: «She says it will start in a quarter of an hour». The glance between me and Tom can well be transalated as it follows: «She's so glad at believing this...» «And so what do we do?» «Yes, we can well wait for another half an hour, after having lost six ...»
We wait, and now the fumaroles indeed seem more violent ..... is it all possible? I continue to run this way and that to keep warm, and suddenly, while I'm heading towards South East Cone, what do I see! Red bombs begin to bounce in its vent. «It starts! starts! starts!» I run, we all run to take our cameras, but during the next ten minutes South East Cone does not consider us worthy of more than modest strombolian explosions. I am discouraged: «Is this to be all?» My poor faith is soon humiliated: in the fissure dividing the south flank, a yellow gush of golden lava pours out, and it suddenly becomes a big fountain vomiting a fluid yellow flow running fast, at more than 5 m/s, down the South East Cone south flank. In the meantime, from the vent on the top, giant, yellow fountains in a few seconds rise to 20, 50, 100, 300 meters, giant, yellow golden fountains made of honey. Is it possible? Possible? Possible? The speed at which everything has risen, with which the silent and dead cone has become a god in action, annihilates me astonished. I snap photos like a frantic, by free hand, in the wind, with a few hopes, but the lava is so bright to require daylight exposure times in full night, against any reason.
The yellow jets and fountains increase, the lava flow already expands at the Cone's base, untill a different jet, enormous, with which the South East Cone clears his uvula to sing at the top of his voice, explodes oblique. I do not know how, but I understand it is directed precisely towards us. I take my cameras and run under the roof of the Torre del Filosofo hut, shouting «To the shelter!» Apparently I sound convincing enough, because in a few seconds we find ourselves five below the roof. Only ten seconds later dull bumps start coming from the roof. I think: «Now everything can happen», I turn and we see dozens of red bombs falling all around us, breaking in thousands of splinters bouncing this way and that on the snow. Soon the bumping on the roof ends and I find myself to think: «No, nothing will happen anymore».
David and Thorsten are already out, looking further and further up, astonished. I take the first camera I find, I run out too and look up. A golden column is rising from the South East Cone and, as Pindar has shown us, is holding up the sky, rising all the way to the zenith! In the sky it fragments in thousands of golden bombs, which would be destined to us by the human reason. However, kind Eolus, who continues to shake me preventing me to take not shaken photos, takes the bombs away by bringing them far away towards the East. No more than a hundred meters from us, between Torre del Filosofo and South East Cone, a curtain of red bombs falls into the snow, and millions of impacts produce that rustle you can hear during the most violent summer downpours only. This rustle, however, is surmounted by a loud hollow roar shouted by South East Cone, who, seemingly still unsatisfied, trills with thunders, twice per second. Every thunder corresponds to a pulse in the fire column: I count ten of them up up to the sky. On the left the column is surrounded by the largest bombs, unaffected by the wind. On the right, it is half masked by the ash column which is rising skywards in whirls, before black, then white pure steam, rising all the way up to the moon.
During a long long life lasted ten minutes, we stay enraptured to adore this golden chain linking the sky to the earth. Only the awareness of how it is impossible to photograph it, both due to the strong wind, and the extreme brightness contrast between the fountain bright yellow core and the marvellous swirls of black ash rising vortically, only this irritates me. But soon I understand that one must not even try to photograph a god in action: and how to register that roar, and that red rain on the snow? Quickly as it had started, the column dwindle as if it were sucked back into the South East Cone. In only a few seconds its height is halved, we barely have the time to photograph the last exhausted fountains and the Cone itself, completely glowing now, so much that it is impossible to distinguish it from the lava flow, now advancing on a front half a kilometre wide.
Now that all is over, only the incandenscent South East Cone is illuminating our faces as if it were daylight. I turn to look at my friends. Oh, one should give away everything to have the chance to see so happy men, happy of having seen Zeus in action and not to be incinerated, happy of having seen the bright Apollo's face and not to have become crazy, so childy happy to be convinced that this is really the best possible world, if it is able to do all this. Thorsten suddenly brandishes his cellular phone to tell about lava fountains more than a kilometre high, David at the end bursts into welsh shouts, only Tom remains motionless, staring at the incandescent South East Cone and, beyond that, the highway that he will follow straight for all his life. But what is beyond comparison is the face of my angel, full of that secret joy that a few of lucky scientists have experienced in their life: that of having predicted a phenomenon (and what a phenomenon!) which has precisely happened. As soon as I understand this, I see that she has understood I have understood: then I must, I absolutely must do a thing. I run to her, I kiss her and I shout to her: «But have you understood? Have you understood how big a present have you done to us?» I do not remember which language I used, I do not know what she has understood ... I do not even know her name, I will not see her anymore.