Eruption

Word of the Post: Chicco di grandline (Hail stone)

Have you ever looked into the mouth of a killer? I have.
Thousands of years ago Mt. Vesuvius erupted and whole cities were destroyed. On October 4, 2008 the sky above Mt. Vesuvius erupted and our entire AIFS group was pelted by hail stones.
When the trip to Naples was planned for us, we were told we would hike Mt. Vesuvius. I did not hike Mt. Vesuvius, I ran Mt. Vesuvius. The day started overcast, and then turned to blue skies before we arrived at the ancient volcano. While our bus climbed the road leading to the volcano, we took in all our surroundings. In front of us, we saw the path the lava took when the volcano erupted thousands of years ago. Crumbled rock scarred with burns lay on a straight line down the side of the original volcano. I could imagine seeing the boiling red hot lava coming down and the feelings that people must have felt as they saw an entire mountain coming down before them. Even though I was looking at miles of ash and silt, I knew that the people of the town of Pompeii had not died from the lava, but that the people had suffocated from the smoke and ash. Other cities weren’t destroyed because of the wind pattern the day of the explosion. The wind pattern traveled in the direction of Pompeii, which is why smoke and ash were cast upon the city.
Eventually, our bus reached the beginning of the hiking path, and soon we were walking through what felt like ash and broiled rock. At points it became easier to do a slow jog up the side of the volcano. I was bundled up in a hooded sweatshirt and my high school rain jacket as the wind blew and the temperature began to drop by the second. I felt as though I was climbing to the top of Mountain in Canada for a skiing trip. We reached three quarters of the way of our twenty minute hike (we had driven an hour up the mountain before our hike), and we saw the inside of the volcano. I was looking inside the mouth of a killer.
I was looking inside the mouth of boiling hot, molten lava that on any given day could choose to erupt. As I stared down into the deep cave, smoke began to bubble up from below, clouds started to cover our faces, and the air we breathed came out like the smoke from the caterpillars pipe in Alice in Wonderland. It was what a New Yorker would call a winter white out. Rain began to hit my jacket and my hands numbed to a red. Umbrellas were up and a bunch of us focused on making it to the top. As we reached the top, I saw what looked like a snowflake hit the ground. I thought to myself, “Hail?” Then BOOM—we were being pummeled by marbled sized hail stones as the top of Mount Vesuvius. Ten of us ducked for cover under the roof of the café at the top of the mountain that was closing. We huddled nervous that it wouldn’t stop. A car arrived and a man opened the window to tell us that we had to go down and that we couldn’t stay there. We waited twenty seconds for a slow spot in the hail and then our adventure down the volcano began. I felt hail hit my jacket and I took off-the wind hit my face like a drop on a rollercoaster. I now was experiencing a true wind-sprint—my field hockey coaches through the years would be proud. My momentum carried me down the hill as I dodged rocks and as the hail storm grew stronger. I then saw the group that had left before us huddled in the café located halfway up the volcano. I ran in there, and the rest of our group followed. We caught our breath and the hail stopped, and the rain slowed, and we left. While we had been told to leave the top of the mountain, the other group had been told to remain in that café—How funny.
The second half of the mountain is a blur as we jogged the remainder to find heat at the meeting point. Our directors pointed us in the direction of a fireplace, and made sure were all okay. One of our students had worn only shorts a t-shirt. He had pellet marks all over his body.
Twenty minutes after warming up at the meeting point we headed onto the bus. As we looked back at the volcano and the weather that had erupted over us, we took in an observation. The clouds were parting like the seven seas, and not before long the sky above was clear of all clouds and the bluest of all blues. It just wasn’t in our marbles to enjoy the mountain that day.
But despite the hail, cold, and numbing rain it was an experience worth having. How many people can say that they survived a volcano in a hail storm?
I looked into the mount of a killer, and I lived to tell the experience.