Exploration and Discovery

I awoke before the sun rose, a necessity to catch the clear dawn skies. Salim, Rudi and I met in the lobby and took our breakfast to go. The roads were empty and our jeep took the bumps easily. We ate our meal, toast spread with jam and topped with a fried egg, silently taking in the tropical landscape around us. An hour later, we arrived at the base of Kawah Ijen, an active volcano in Eastern Java. My heart sank when I saw a sign that read “crater closed, no entrance, no mining." That disappointment was lifted within seconds as Salim and Rudi ducked under the sign and I quickly followed.
The air was crisp as we began to climb up the mountain; the path started out flat but quickly steepened. As we ascended through the forest, miners walked by carrying large loads of sulfur to the base of the mountain. We were soon joined by a miner walking up for his second load of the day. He walked barefoot and shirtless, his muscles were conditioned to carry the weight of the sulfur and his shoulders easily accepted the double basket.
The sky slowly lightened and the faint smell of sulfur started to reach our noses. The odor told me we were close and as we rounded the final corner the forest gave way to a startling lunar landscape. The mountaintop was devoid of vegetation and the stones were a haunting white. Beyond a plume of smoke, I caught my first glimpse of the blue lake that fills the crater and the brilliant yellow sulfur deposits on its shore. The scene took my breath away.
Carefully we descended towards the base of the crater, the path uneven and steep. As miners carried their loads up, we stepped aside allowing them to pass. Their motions were mesmerizing, each step up the rocky slope was made confidently, their bodies weighed down by the load and their eyes straight ahead. At the base of the crater, I stopped by the lake, reaching my hand in to feel the heat of the sulfuric water. The smell was not nearly as strong as I expected and Rudi and I sat on a rock marveling at the men chopping sulfur. At times they disappeared into the expanding cloud of smoke and we could see only their feet.
We rose to climb back up the crater, pausing at the top to look at the lake one last time. In just 45 minutes everything had changed, the spreading smoke obscured the view and dulled the brilliance of the colors. Standing on the white rocks and looking back towards the crater, I felt that for the first time I had experienced something truly foreign.