(translated with google translate)
“Do you ever go to the top?
Yup! Just tomorrow we go up with a group … it’s also our anniversary … a different way to celebrate!
Because a dinner was too simple, wasn’t it? “
From the diary of the chatter on tour, one of the goodies of the last few days that has made us smile.
In fact there are many more relaxing ways to celebrate an anniversary. But if I think about our wedding six years ago, I can’t stop my mind running to that 2014 eruption that has accompanied us throughout the month.
The roars of the evenings before the party, the amazement of the Nordic guests when evening fell and the top of Etna gave us his wedding gift, enchanting everyone with incredible fireworks; my first trek to Serracozzo just a few days after the celebrations, at night, to enjoy the flow from overlooking the Bove valley, and the risky return with almost discharged torches, with the Citelli refuge dog that helped us to descend safe and sound to the starting point.
We still did not know that shortly thereafter that passion would also become a job. And not even how much we would have loved him.
So what better way for us to celebrate?
And so last Sunday we went up, Etnavic team in full force with ten guys from Hungary and the rest of Italy.
I had been missing for a year, Ludo for a little longer and Luca … obviously the day before!
A warm and clear day greeted us. Were it not that to climb up there, up to where Etna gives voice to its countless speeches, completely kidnaps soul and thoughts, I would tell you that the best thing was to observe the expressions of the faces transforming at every stop, at every stretch earned. To then open up totally to the emotions up there, between steam and sulfur, wind and whispers from the central crater.
But that’s not all: to get to the top you will cross the 2019 flow, wide and sometimes still hot. The boots slide, the ankles play a twist dance. Then islands of black sand finally allow us to look up and, while we absorb Luca’s explanations, our eyes run incredulously around. It is difficult to understand how tall you are, because the sensation is that of being on the back of an elegant lady who dressed in a multicolored shawl printed on a geographical map of Sicily.
And the more you go up the more the shawl flutters.
If it weren’t for those Sicilian eyes softened by the sight of Bronte and Randazzo, so small from there, they bring with them memories of childhood and family …
But the casting is over. It’s time to wear helmets and face the last part of the climb.
“We remain compact” says Luca “because from here, if we die, we must die together” and laughs.
The summit approaches, the cold wind tortures us playing to raise sand and stones. From here Etna no longer looks so friendly.
But yet…
Yet fear is not perceived. Neither among us nor among the tourists we are accompanying. Rather a sort of impatience, of excitement that goes up and up until you can no longer hold it.
So here, at the end of the climb, between stones and sand, the smoke. A lot of smoke. And the first hole. Huge. Threatening. Charming. Black, white, yellow. At every corner fumaroles, increasingly intense until you no longer see what’s underneath.
And the heat, diluted by the wind, perceptible everywhere.
It is there that in a completely natural way you no longer feel the need to speak. Continue on the edge of the crater to pass from Boccanuova to the Central almost breathless. We remain silent, each with their own inner turmoil, each with their own personal ancestral speech that delivers to her, to this incredible 500,000-year-old lady, the great wise woman who tells you everything without saying a word.
That’s what it is for me.
A trip. Intimate, which starts from the earth’s crust and reaches your soul.
Luca’s voice awakens us. It’s time to go. And, reluctantly, it goes.
You descend sinking to the ankles in the sand, with hair that smells of sulfur and dust, passing through dull craters, fumaroles, glaciers, lava channels, hot steam corners and endless anthrax-black deserts.
The descent ends after 700 meters in altitude of pure poetry.
We are tired. Really. But in the eyes every time a deep light of acquired calm and gained awareness is added.
That something that changes them forever.
What makes those who observe them say: “those eyes have seen a lot”.
But still, believe me, not enough.
Happy birthday to us, then. It was wonderful. We can’t wait to do it again with you and listen to what you will tell us at the end, before running away in the shower to wash away all that sulfur, all that sand, all that wonder.
