Hiking Stromboli

Active Italian volcano.  3000’ elevation. 

7 April 2011.  4 pm.  64 degrees.  Sunny. 

Sixteen anxious women from France, Canada, Norway, USA, UK, Kazakhstan.  

One guide--Carmello:  muscular, handsome, capable.  “My job is to get all of you to the top.” 

We’re nervous as cats: “Need to find a bathroom.  Where are the headlamps?  I’m slow, I need to start now.  Let’s go!  No wait!  Need a bathroom.  Need water!  Wait!  Stay here!”

Finally we’re off--carrying our questions and fears with us.

450’: point of no return.  Go back now or summit. Black and white.  We all think about it, but no one turns back.

Carmello forces a snail’s pace on us. Slow, slow steps.  Up, up, up. Switching back and forth through red lava rock.  Only rocks.  No trees.  Eyes on the boots directly ahead.  Step,  plant poles, step. Follow the boots.  Plant poles.  Step up.  Breathe.  Plant poles. Heart OK, not racing.  Breath OK, not hyperventilating.  5 minute stop.  Look down.  White town below becoming smaller.  Other groups like ants follow behind us.  Blue sea spreading out to the horizon.  Start again.  I can do this.  Slowly, slowly.  Up and up.  No rush of adrenaline.  No desire to do this again.  Head clear.  Body on alert.  The line moves forward and up.

750’: 2 minute stop.

1550: 2 minute stop.  Put on another layer.  It’s getting colder.

2000’: 5 minute stop.  Put on helmet in case of lava bombs.

Up and up.  Almost there.  Suddenly a loud explosion to the right.  Want to throw myself on the ground but can’t.  Too dangerous.  Could slide down the hill and into the sea.  Sounds like a bomb exploding.  Billowing black fumes fill the sky.  

Near Summit:  20 minute stop.  Two concrete three-sided huts shield us from the wind.  Put on another layer.  50 mph winds.  Much windier than normal.  Black biting gray ash hits my face like tiny knives.  We plump down in the black ash or on lava rocks, pull out sandwiches and eat quickly.  Who knows when we’ll stop again.  

                                                                                

Carmello draws a line in the dirt about a foot and a half from the crater’s rim.  “Don’t go beyond this line,” he says as though anyone would.  The earth trembles under my feet.  I wonder if I’m on solid ground or just on a sheet hanging out over the crater.  Another huge explosion.  Red lava shooting up.  Exploding, descending, flowing.  Glowing mounds of lava.  Then another explosion to my right.  Lava everywhere.  The gigantic Japanese sun drops towards the darkened horizon.  The wind continues.  

 I turn—the line has formed and is moving off.  I rush to get in. We ascend the rim to the summit.  Hard-hitting ash stings my face.  Another explosion rocks the air.  Red lava exploding everywhere.  I stand amazed.  I turn around.  The group is forming again.  Frantically I try to find my headlamp.  No time.  Swinging on my backpack I rush to get into the line already descending.  Why are we descending so soon?  

It’s getting dark.  How long will this twilight last?  How long will I be able to see?

The descent is steep through the soft grey volcanic ash.  My boots sink and disappear with each step.  I mustn’t stop.  The front part of the group is nearly out of sight.  The last part way behind.  I must stay here in our little midway line and descend fast with them.  Just straight diagonal descent through the ash field.   I need to adjust my poles.  Still walking fast I manage to lengthen one and then the other.  It’s getting darker.  I push closer to Amy ahead of me hoping her headlamp will light my path, too.  I can still make out the line we’re walking because it looks darker in the ash.  My eyes keep searching for that black line while my poles reach out testing where my foot will land—ash, ground, rock?  I can’t look down the side of the volcano.  One misstep and I’ll fall straight down into the sea below.  I feel I’m schussing through the ash.  Soft knees bending, hips moving, shoulders moving, schussing, skiing.  Don’t think, just keep skiing through the soft powder.  On and on.

Finally we reach the trees but still don’t stop.  Why doesn’t Carmello, wherever he is, stop?  I need my headlamp.  We’re out of the ash on hard ground now.  My legs move automatically, jerkily, no control over them, going faster than I want them to.  We keep going afraid to be left further behind.

A Stop: we reach Carmello and the head group going down.  We finally stop.  I take off my hot fleece.  My clothes are soaking with sweat.  I frantically search my backpack for my headlamp afraid we’ll be moving on any minute.  Luckily I find it.  Two women immediately help me turn it on and secure it to my helmet. I am so thankful.  At last I can see. 

We’re off again.  Fast.  Carmello and the front group are already out-of-sight.  Our middle group weaves through the trees.  Poles scrambling to find safe ground amidst the dirt, slippery rock and uneven terrain.  Boat back to Lipari and our hotel leaves at 9:30 pm.  Is that why we’re double-timing this descent? Carmello has gone, vanished.  We come to a T--do we turn right or left?  We can’t see or hear anyone ahead of us.  We grab our little whistles and blow.  “Turn left, over here,” the front group calls out to us.  We head towards them rushing on.  Carmello has apparently abandoned all responsibility for us.  He had said his job was to get us all safely to the top of the volcano.  He never mentioned the bottom, too.  I don't care.  The boat will wait for us or we can sleep here tonight.  Our legs are jelly.  We’re exhausted yet we race on.  

9:30 pm. The town appears.  Then the touring office.  We’ve made it.  We throw our helmets and headlamps onto the table.  “Grazie!!  Ciao!!”  Too hurried and tired to say more than that.  We race to the boat waiting for us.  Last ones on.

9:40 pm.  Upper deck of the speeding boat.  Star-studded skies.  Exhausted, hungry.  Everyone had summited.  No one was hurt.  

Bragging rights forever.

                                

Walking Forward

Two silver disks for feet--

Two short steel poles for legs--

On this bitter winter day
he wore tan shorts.  

Steel legs can’t feel the cold.

A t-shirt--

no coat or sweater.

Nothing to take off,

remove

or place

 in the black plastic tray.

Totally open available for airport security.

His only hand held

his boarding pass.

While his other half arm swung steadily,

precisely counter-balancing

his tilting rocking hips

moving forward

step…..by small step…..by small step.

A soldier back from Iraq?

A baby born that way?

His off-kilter face

Didn’t really say.

I do not, will not, can not offer more—

than what he offered me--

the chance to stop

to pause

to notice

one person’s walking forward 
towards 
his life.

I closed the door so neatly

it clicked as it went shut.

I turned my back and walked away.

ticking ticking in my gut.

I bought a table, chairs, some wine

for newfound friends to drink.

Yet six years on the glasses sit

waiting waiting for their clink. 

I dropped these expectations,

buttoned up, went out alone

and met in wind and yellow leaves

joy-- joy-- joy now known.  

              *********

I longed to seize the Statue

to make its beauty mine--

but had nowhere to store it

outside this slice of time.

I left behind its beauty

walked empty down the street--

yet trailed a chain of yearning

tied securely to my feet.

            ***********

I never knew my grandfather.

He was just

a wavering shimmer in my mind—

--a little boy wearing

a striped dress in an old photo

--a dad reading the paper,

rocking the baby,

smoking his cigarette
all at the same time

--a dad giving a quarter

to his daughter

when asked for a nickel

--a banker coming home one day

in 1933

to climb the stairs

lie on the bed

and cry

--a husband slumped 

over his steering wheel

dead

his wife reaching over

to take the wheel.

I learned

--too late--

his siblings

were alive and well

while I grew up grandpa-less.

--too late--

to hug his three brothers,

kiss his sister,

smell his family’s smell,

listen to their jokes and stories about

their brother who died young.

I could have seen

my grandfather’s smile

on a brother’s face.

--too late--

I am left

with just the shimmering

once again.

The Crack

                                                          

I made a little crack in the space between me and all those people I carry around in my head.  I didn’t know the crack was coming.  I just heard “Crack!” and suddenly I breathed fresh air and felt free.  This happened last Friday.

My 22-year-old niece Kara was visiting me during her midterm break from college.  Friday night we were sipping wine in a packed downtown London pub.  As usual, however, even with all the loud talking surrounding us, I could still hear my ever-present “how-are-we-doing-here?” internal monitor which all week had pretty much hovered around the “we’re-doing-OK” level.  After six years of hosting friends and family in France and the UK, I am still a bit anxious that my monitor will suddenly plummet to the “we-are-so-BORED-with-you” level.

This is not without reason, however, for I was born with the mark of the middle child.  In our family that meant the quiet boring one, unlike older and younger siblings who were energetic, fun, social.  But what haunted me most about this middle mark was that as the middle child I was destined to be either asexual or gay which is fine if that is what one wants to be, but I wanted to end up married with kids and the outlook, given my birth order, didn’t bode well.

 My Aunt Allie was the first middle.  She was so shy that her 14-year-old sister dropped out of school a year and waited for Allie to catch up so that they could go through high school together.  Nevertheless, while Honey went to dances on Friday night, Allie stayed home and did her nails.  Allie never even had the courage to answer the phone until she was twenty and, of course, she never dated or got married.  She was, the family determined, asexual.

Bill, my older cousin and the second middle, was gay.  He, at least, had a wicked sense of humor which I thought greatly improved my middle heritage, but eventually he found a lover in the Middle East and moved there permanently.  I didn’t want to live forever in the Middle East.  I wanted to live in the USA.  So once, plucking up courage, I asked my mom if she thought I’d ever get married.  “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “You just have to wait and see.”  What I saw plainly was single Aunt Allie.

Not that Allie didn’t have many excellent qualities.  She was courageous.  As a young woman she answered the call to help with the WWII war effort by signing up with the State Department and heading off to Europe.  Thus began her highly successful career working in American embassies around the world.  She was smart, competent and rich.  But, above all else, she was generous giving family members wonderful opportunities to see the world.   She also had flawless skin and absolutely no face wrinkles--ever.  But we knew that was because she never had sex or had to deal with a man or a bunch of kids.  But no matter how adventurous her exotic foreign life seemed or how smooth her skin was, I didn’t want to end up like her.  So I was very relieved when I grew up, got married, had four kids, didn’t become rich and got wrinkles.  Against the odds, I had broken the mark of the middle child.

But now here I was in London hosting Kara for a week.  By day two while I was trying so hard not to be quiet and boring, it dawned on me that I had nevertheless indeed become Allie.  True, I hadn’t turned out asexual, but here I was the old aunt living in London where Allie once lived.  Here I was showing the city to young Kara just like Allie had shown it to me some forty years ago.  Here I was pulling out my little wallet stuffed with crisp bills to buy cookies for us in the market just like Allie had done for me.  And I, too, organized our route, wore a grey raincoat and carried many maps.  I might be a smaller, coca-lite version of Allie, but I was Allie.

Then last Friday night Kara and I were in that pub drinking white wine and waiting for a new Indian girl, a friend of Kara’s college roommate, to find her way from south London to Trafalgar Square to meet up with Kara to go clubbing.  The room was packed with loud people dressed in blue jeans and baggy sweaters and the tables were sloshing with spilled beer.  For the last three hours Kara and Usha had been texting back and forth about how and when to meet up while Kara and I went from pub to pub.  It was now 11:30 p.m. and Usha still hadn’t arrived.  Sipping our wine Kara and I continued to wait.  That’s when I heard the crack.  Loudly.

Yes, I am living in London showing my niece around like Allie did.  I do look like her and share her name, but Allie would never ever be in her third pub of the night with her niece drinking white wine at 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night.  Never.  Ever. Not a chance.  Long before this hour she would have taken her bath, done her nails and gone to bed.

CRACK! In an instant Aunt Allie peeled away from me and slipped into the darkness.  I was just me. Living in London.  Drinking wine with my niece.  Period.

In celebration and as a souvenir of our evening together I quietly slipped our wine glasses into my bag.  Something else Allie would never ever have done.

Two Lives

Diving deep into the river

body slicing

raging water

consuming fully

head and torso

muscles nerves

taunt with purpose

surging forward

through the water.

Sitting silent on the shore

                         watching tide

                              slowly ebbing

remembering

                              remembering

                             remembering

wetness

              salt

                    and holding

                                         of the water’s depth

pondering

                  puzzling

                                 pondering                          

                                                   going through the water

until finally

                    calmly

                              somehow

                 passage settles……..into the one I swam.

Only the smallest snag remains--

Oh, to dive

                       again

        into that raging river….