In
Portland, Oregon, when given a piece of white construction paper and
finger paints, children will blob and smudge paintings of snow-capped
mountains topped with whipped-cream clouds and sprinkled with pine
trees. In San Diego, California, kids will draw sandy beaches lined
with palm trees and spotted with sharks and surfers. In Guatemala, the
children draw Volcanos.
Normally
they draw them in pairs or triplets with square-page-corner suns
looming over rolling hills or blue lakes. Today, the children have
added something special to their volcanoes. Can you guess what it is?
Let me give you a hint: it's red, it's fiery, and it has something to
do with that game your mother used to yell at you for when she found
you jumping from the couch to the dining room table in order to avoid
touching the floor. Yup. Hot lava. Hot lava is what is spewing from
Volcan Fuego at this very moment as I write from an internet cafe in
Antigua, Guatemala. Hot lava, and pictures thereof, is what is finally
making the front page of the local papers after two weeks of constant
eruption activity. And hot lava, is what has inspired all the young
Guatemalan artists to open, and apply liberally, the contents of the
bottle of red paint.
The
hot stuff, and that which produces it, has also fired a little
inspiration in me. It has inspired a sort of reflection on The
Volcano's influence, or its *explosive* pressure, on my own life. And
thus I present to you: Sol v.s. The Volcano -- A History.
May, 1980: Sol vs. St. Hellens
Now
it just so happens, that my earliest memory of life and/or
consciousness took place on May 18th, 1980. Of course, my consciousness
was not so keen enough to actually remember that date. The date I got
online. My consciousness was only mature enough to grasp and remember
the image of ashes falling from the sky as I was being held up on the
top of a car. May 18th, 1980 is the date Mount St. Hellens erupted.
In
the years between that fir-tree-fateful day and my first trip to
Central America, The Volcano influenced my life only in the forms of
ice cream cones, chemistry class filter flasks, and Madonna's chest.
But WHEN The Volcano decided to make a move in my life, it did so in
true volcanic nature... violently.
October 2000: Sol vs. Volcan Madera
Volcan
Madera is located on the Ometepe Island, in Lake Nicaragua. Myself and
seven other travelers hitched and hiked our way up to an old banana
plantation called Magdalena that had a hammock-deck open for
backpackers wanting to hike the volcano towering over it. We arrived
late in the night and passed out early in preparation for the eight
hour hike the next morning. Early a.m., we gobbled up the only meal the
plantation owners had to offer -- beans, rice, eggs and bananas. The
owner told us that we needed a guide to find our way and a rope to
climb the last half hour down into the crater-lake. "Guide? Sheeah. Who
needs a guide!" He offered us HIS rope.
Four of us were
impatient waiting for two in our group to finish breakfast. They waved
us on and told us they'd catch up with us in a few minutes. Now a
five-hour hike up doesn't sound like much, but please keep in mind, it
was about the angle of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
About
four exhausting hours into the trip, whilst we were sitting down for a
rest at a break in the path, an Italian guy caught up with us. Two
paths layed out in front of us and he opted for the one the rest of us
had just decided against. But he was adamant, and I told the others to
rest while I climbed it with him a bit. We had been climbing up the
jungle floor for about ten minutes when I decided, mostly out of the
fact that I didn't WANT to climb mud any more, that the other path
would be a better option. I yelled this up to him. The last I heard
were his continued echos of, "No! I'm sure this is it....just a little
farther!". I turned around, found the others, and we took the other
path. And hour later we were splish-splashing ourselves a very fine
time in the lake within the crater of The Volcano and eating
bruised-to-baby-food bananas and cracked eggs.... and feeling that very
special type of proud you can only feel after successfully hiking a
volcano.
In
typical Central American rain season fashion, it POURED on us on our
way DOWN The Volcano -- turning our descent into the world's largest
non-yellow slip-and-slide. When we finally returned to camp, we were
painted head to toe in mud and short one shoe. We kicked back in our
hammocks anxiously awaiting the arrival of our friends (from their own
adventures) so that we could clink beers and revel in how cool we were,
together. We waited and waited...and it grew dark.
The pair that
had told us they were going to follow us "in five minutes" came down
first. They were covered in mud and scrapes. The girl was on the verge
of hysterics. She read the questions in our eyes. "I don't want to talk
about it." she stated. Her partner stumbled up on the deck after her
and replied, "See...we made it!". She shot him a lava-hot glare that
any volcano would have been jealous of, and stomped off to the showers.
Apparently, she had followed him and his claims of "I know where we
are!" around for a good eight hours before they ran out of water and
fell down a stream created from the downpour. Eventually, but still
hours later, she shoved him out of the way, and they managed to find
and follow a river down The Volcano.
The second pair of
travelers had left in the morning in search of some hidden waterfall at
the foot of neighboring Volcan Conception. They never found the
waterfall, but they DID find a dead body...in the ditch of a street.
Traumatized, they headed back to the plantation, but got lost on their
way back up in the dark and had walked into ants nests. No. They didn't
want to hear about our trip up The Volcano.
The next morning,
the planation owner asked us if we had seen an Italian man when we were
up on the Volcano. Apparently, he hadn´t come down yet. We crossed
worried eyes at each other and told him our experience. He shrugged
nonchalantly and told us that just the day before, a girl had sprained
her foot on the way up and had spent the night on The Volcano. He
stopped the next couple starting up on their hike up and told them to
keep an eye out for a lost Italian -- Nicaragua's version of a formal
search party. I saw the Italian come down a few hours later. I didn't
ask him if he wanted to talk about it.
4 lost hikers, 2 lost
overnight, 1 dead body, 2 ant attacks, 1 sprained ankle, and 1 lost
shoe -- all offered as sacrafices on the altar of Volcan Madera in one
weekend. Enough to appease the Gods?
October 2001: Sol vs. Volcan Pacaya
Volcan
Pacaya is a 7,383-foot volcano that lies about 27 miles south of
Guatemala City. For five bucks, a person can join one of the dozens of
tour groups that climb the volcano daily. The hike takes about three
hours to ascend in the tour group, but about 1.5 if you're not
"resting" every 15 minutes at the command of your guide while waiting
for the stragglers in the back of the group. Pacaya is highly active,
and if the prospect of a close encounter with the lava kind doesn't
inch up the adrenaline, the rumor that all the armed guards placed
along the trail are ex-convicts usually does. No worries though,
because your 50-year old guide DOES have a really big stick.
I
hiked Pacaya in October, during the winter season of Guatemala. During
the trip up, our guide repeatedly pointed out -- into the walls of
thick white fog surrounding us -- the beautiful views of volcanos and
cities that we could NOT see. (Advice: The best time to hike Pacaya is
NOT in the rain or winter seasons. It is also suggested to hike Pacaya
when it is NOT exploding. Sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised at
what official warnings the tour agencies will NOT tell you about if
they see a flash of cash.)
The last hour of the hike was up black volcanic sand.
*one step up.....slide two steps back*
*one step up.....slide two steps back*
It was in this manner that we lost ten percent of the hikers to exhaustion.
There
were about 15 hikers in front of me on the narrow path when hard gusts
of sulfuric gas began picking fights with each of us indiviually,
trying to steal our oxygen. Three wide-eyed and crying girls came
crawling frantically down the path yelping to everyone to turn around.
Having been recently trained to spot the signs of panic in a divemaster
course, I grabbed the first one, stared her squarely in the eyes, and
instructed her to breath, be calm, and climb down. Admittedly, it WAS
difficult to breath, but I had brought a handkerchief to cover my mouth
and wasn't about to turn around five minutes from the summit. (Stupid?
Probably. For the record, I knew that.)
At the top, I found one
of the guides posing pretty with successful hikers. Oddly enough, none
of the ten or so cameras that made it up, worked -- something to do
with too much white balance because of the walls of fog and smoke. So
we all just moved back and forth in a dance that involved inching
closer and closer to the cliff of the crater *one, two, three* and
jumping back and crouching low to cough and gasp for air *one, two,
three* before we turned around and made our way back down *dip*.
The
descent of The Volcano held its own surprise delights. First, the "one
step up, slide two steps down" dance that exhausted us on the way up,
made for a thrilling black-snow-ski-slope ride back down. Those daring
to make a run for it, flew down the summit in echoing cries of
laughter. It was while we sat on a cliff emptying sandfalls from our
shoes that the walls of white fog decided to part like stage curtains
and unveil to us -- in gasps of awe and clicks of cameras -- those
INCREDIBLE views that we had missed the entire way up. It was a
surprise party worth being unaware of.
February 2002: Sol vs. Volcan Fuego
More
than 500 volcanoes are known to have erupted on the earth's surface
since historic times. One happens to be erupting within view of the
window beside me. Last night, we drove to the foot of Volcan Fuego to
get a closer seat at the show. After the initial shrieks of excitement
(in response to the the river-of-red) subdued, we heard -- in the
silence -- the undulating purr and roar of The Volcano. One word for
that sound: Humbling.
The constant erupting action of Volcan
Fuego over the last two weeks even inspired me to drop "Volcano" into
Encyclopedia.com. It was there that I learned that Volcan Mauna Loa is
taller that Mt. Everest (but its base is on the ocean floor) and that
evidence of extraterrestrial volcanic activity has been found on Venus,
Triton (a satellite of Neptune), and Lo (a satellite of Jupiter). Some
travelers say that it's the influence of the four volcanoes looming
over Antigua that exert mysterious forces upon weekend passer-byers
into changing their departure dates and getting lost here for months --
a kind of Bermuda-Volcano Triangle if you will. Of course,despite my
research, the mystery, magic and beauty of The Volcano remain
indefinable in my own mental encyclopedia.
So, Volcan Hellens
inspired consciousness within me. Volcan Madera inspired fear. Volcan
Pacaya inspired beauty and awe. Volcan Fuego inspired magic and
mystery. But it is in the cumulation of all of these experiences, that
The Volcano has inspired one thing above all these others. And that
is...respect.
(I'm traveling this weekend to Quetaltenago,
to soak in the hot springs of Aguas Calientes Georgina for three days
-- Compliments of The Volcano.)
