May 20, 2011
Best I figure, all God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. Thus, it is very VERY important that we never become boring. With that in mind I dragged myself out of bed at 3:30am to hike up an active volcano. Already at an elevation of 2300m and perched on a slope in eastern Java, Indonesia, my feet were cold for the first time in Asia. Everyone in our small group fitted up with heavy jackets, and hiking boots ... I slipped on my flip-flops. 'No sense - no feeling', my parents are fond if saying. Maybe a few frozen toes would be the coolest sacrifice the lonely volcano gods would have received in decades? Maybe, as a friend told me once, everything is just better in bare feet. Five of us stuffed our shivering selves into the back if a 4x4 designed to seat two, and we set off towards the smoking mountain in the pre-dawn darkness. Out the rattling windows, it looked like M.C. Escher had thrown up all over the hills: the twisted road shimmies between cultured plots that are set at such extreme angles, you'd swear you were looking at them from directly above. I was busy calculating how many summersaults it would take to get to the bottom, and whether wearing a very big hat would factor into the equation, when we arrived at the base of the ancient crater. Up, up, and up we trekked - like that little dog pulling the Grinch's sleigh - only I had a granola bar, not a bunch of stolen Who-presents. At the top of the switchbacking trail, we perched ourselves precariously on a rock ledge, securing what I was convinced would be a prime view of the sunrising over the smoking Bromo. I wasn't at all prepared for what appeared as the sun crept skyward to our left. The sweeping and desolate crater directly below us was dominated by the soaring purple volcano at its center, as yellow clouds swept by. Black smoke rolled out of it's peak and its ash fell, while the twilight stars disappeared into a haunting orange sky. Otherworldly and breathtaking, it was everything all at once: the writhing goop of primordial creation, the smoldering hours of a post-apocalyptic earth. Only one thing could have completed my soul shattering experience: a pint sized Sherpa with the La Pavoni EPBB-8 Europiccola 8-cup prized espresso machine and some go-cups strapped to his back. But, since we're always told we can't have everything, I settled for another granola bar and a few more minutes of perfect brewing silence. When it was light enough to match the shade if my toes to the violet stones of the trail, we scurried down to get closer to smoldering Bromo. Our 4x4 drove us through the great rolling planes of quiet grey ash, and dropped us near the base if the volcano. I flipped off my flops and dug my toes into the warm volcanic ash as we made fresh tracks past a partially buried temple and upwards into the strange canyons and sweeping dunes created by the shattering blast. Everything living was muted and dead, suspended under almost fluffy layers of ash that was falling like Christmas snow in the not-so-far distance. Everything is just better in bare feet. Getting closer and closer to the Tolkien-like stairs that the locals had carved out of the volcano side before it became active again in November 2010, we were turned back by resolute local men who were determined to save my lungs from being devoured by sulphuric gases. At the inclining slopes of Bromo I left my hand print in the cooling ash ... and added an extra finger, so that when aliens rediscover our obliterated earth, they will have some archaeological discrepancies to chat about over coffee.
Slaughter.
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