Capers On Stromboli
by L. C. Baume
“Stromboli” was a film; it is also a volcano. Volcanoes can be capricious. I have lived inside the crater of an extinct volcano, I have climbed to the top of a somnolent volcano, I have flown over the billowing clouds of an active volcano; but I had never actually set foot on the summit of a volcano in eruption. I determined to remedy this omission.
There are of course volcanoes and volcanoes. There is Vesuvius which engulfed and stifled Pompeii and Herculaneum in one catastrophic convulsion in 79 A.D. There is Fujiyama, ethereal and aloof in the morning mist[1]. There is Llullaillaco, in Chile, towering to a height of over 20,000 ft. There is, or was, Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait, which blew up and sent its dust-laden sulphurous smoke right round the world, blotting out the sun. There is Mont Pelee which, early one morning some 60 years ago, erupted in one brief blinding minute and completely obliterated the town of St. Pierre together with its 35,000 inhabitants. And there is Stromboli.
Rising gently to a height of 3,000 ft. from out of the calm blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea, its green-tinged lower slopes blurred by the haze of summer heat, Stromboli siestas peacefully. Only a white plume of smoke drifting lazily from its summit discloses the fiery nature within.
It is common knowledge that many years ago a fellow called Cronus, at the instigation of his mother and armed by her with a scythe, emasculated his father and, as a result of a subsequent incestuous association with his sister, had 3 sons, one of whom was Poseidon. Poseidon, not unknown either for his amorous affairs, had a son called Aeolus who in due turn married the daughter of King Liparus. These two went to live in some islands now known as the Lipari or Aeolian Islands situated some 140 miles, as the Siren flies, from Sorrento. Their neighbour was Hephaestus, the mysterious but obliging blacksmith whose subterranean workshops connected with Mount Etna in Sicily. Aeolus became the guardian of the winds and many people came to visit him, amongst them Odysseus, a Greek shipowner. My own visit to the Aeolian Islands occurred of course much later; anyway it was his Uncle Hades, the keeper of the “Great Lighthouse of the Mediterranean”, whom I wished to visit.
Today a steamship sails from Naples on a regular schedule to call on the seven islands of the Aeolian group. Unable to reach the small jetty of the main village of Stromboli, the steamer anchors off shore—out towards the rocky islet of Stroboliocchi which rises vertically out of the sea to a height of nearly 200 ft.—and small lighters convey the passengers and cargo ashore.
The jet-black volcanic sand of the foreshore is in dramatic contrast to the Daz-white walls of the small cubic buildings grouped and scattered along the untidy lanes that lead to nowhere in particular; small, simple, square houses for the most part, many of them empty, many crumbling into decay, abandoned, if not entirely forgotten, by the 4,000 inhabitants who have emigrated to find a more peaceful and more assured future overseas. Only some 450 islanders remain.
Though still early, it is hot, hot with an oppressiveness that turns even the thought of a walk into an agony and the prospect of an ascent of the volcano into a mental malaise. But it is siesta time; non si affretti.
The most sensible time to begin an ascent is in the later afternoon; the heat of the day is exhausted, the shadows lengthen and there is the possibility of a cool evening breeze. From the jetty, my companion and I (for we were two) followed the lower lane which leads westwards to the end of the village^ pausing only to admire the vivid purple bougainvillea and the flame-red hibiscus trees growing in the courtyards of the whitewashed houses. At the outskirts of the village the lane forsakes the rocky cliffs of the coast and turns inland, climbing gently through neglected vineyards bordered by clumps of olive trees and fig trees until, suddenly, it is a lane no longer. Instead there is a road, engineered and paved, some relic of a long-forgotten and never completed project, winding and climbing up the lower slopes of the volcano. And equally abruptly the road ends; there is no lane either, only an ill-defined path meandering on through the dry grass and the thickets of thorny scrub and ubiquitous cactus opuntia, vaguely and half-heartedly.
We continued; ahead of us the path led on, passing in a short while through a miniature forest of thick bamboo, two metres high, and then opening out on to the scrub-covered slopes of lava boulder and powdered ash up which, in the gathering dusk, we floundered and stumbled.
It was at about this time that suddenly, without any warning, the stillness of the mountain was shattered by a frightening “woosh” and roar just above our heads. I ducked instinctively for it was exactly the sound of a stick of bombs crashing down from the skies; but my momentary alarm was unjustified for, as we were to discover later, this was only a spasmodic eruption from the main crater still invisible to us from below. Hephaestus was at work.
We found a track again leading up through the loose sterile ash with which the whole of the upper part of the mountain seemed to be covered. Soon we were level with the main crater and could see distinctly the black specks of ash and the lumps of molten lava that were spewed out with each volcanic vomi-tion silhouetted against the pale evening sky. The summit lay a few hundred feet higher and we decided to press on while we could still see and before we were too overcome by the foul sulphurous fumes blowing across our path.
Three hours after leaving the village we were at the top, but our desire to follow along the summit ridge to other barely discernible summits was frustrated by the thick and opaque clouds of steam and smoke issuing from the various fissures and craters and drifting across the mountain top. So we descended to a strategic point closer to and overlooking the main crater where we had decided to halt and await the night so as to see Stromboli in all its pyrotechnic splendour. From this eerie other-world viewpoint, we watched the dull red globe of the sun far below us float, sink and dissolve in a sublimation of sky and sea and mist. With the darkness came a bitterly cold wind against which even our thick woollen sweaters and windproof anoraks proved insufficient to keep us warm; we munched our mortadello sandwiches, gritty with volcanic ash, and waited.
Our vigil was well rewarded for every 10 to 15 minutes an impressive eruption took place. A deep rumble would be heard coming from within the mountain, followed immediately by a shattering “woosh” and the belching of a fiery blast of flame and hot ash high into the dark night sky; the fountains of white hot lava ash would spurt 80 to 90 metres up, changing from yellow to red, and then fall back on to the mountain and, still glowing, go rolling down the lava-run—the “sciara del Fuoco”—down and down towards the sea. Then all would be still again, except for the continuous spitting of hot ash from nearby and much smaller fissures. Occasionally we noticed an incandescent glow through the thick clouds of smoke, as though there were yet other active craters beyond the one we could see.
Soon the moon came riding into view, seeking Endymion; a clear white moon so bright that, as we gathered our cameras and gear and prepared to make our way back down the mountain, we had no need to use our torches. The descent was rapid, as we slithered and glissaded down the silken ash and galloped down the clinker-strewn slopes to the path through the bamboo glade. It was cool, we were elated by our “baptism of hell-fire” and by the prospect of a few hours in bed.
As we approached the outskirts of the village, we noticed that the night air was heavy with a cloying oriental perfume, reminiscent of frangipani blossom after an evening monsoon storm. In the gardens and stony fields around the outlying houses, we noticed clumps of vegetation, each bearing innumerable large flowers in full bloom; exotic and fragrant flowers of white and pale purple, doomed to wither with the first warm rays of the morning sun. “Passion Flowers” I pronounced with dogmatic aplomb, still drugged with the experience of volcanic eruption and the nostalgic scent of virginal frangipani.. But alas, I was wrong; there was no passion—there are only capers at night on Stromboli . . . Capers to be plucked, pickled, bottled and displayed in unromantic uniformity on the plastic-lined shelves of Neapolitan super-markets.
Truly, Sic transit gloria Stromboli