Category: nature and travel

As you can see, the total absence of clouds “up there” proved fleeting.

This chapter’s images were taken circa two minutes later than were the previous post’s.

Here, the photos’ sense of height, scale and distance is pretty close to how a naked-eyed human would perceive them.

The big volcano is very dynamic, always engaged in a closely monitored – but not entirely predictable – “dance” of destruction, construction, collapse, erosion and “quieter periods”.

The cloud-dance on Etna’s upper slopes is even more quickly-shifting – variously, arriving, departing, thinning, thickening, “setting in”, and “burning off”/“dissolving”.

Just a couple of minutes earlier – when I took the previous post’s photos – we were yet to enjoy more than fleeting glimpses of small parts of this post’s crater-scape.

This post’s photos were taken 15-20 minutes after the previous chapter’s.

We had walked up a little higher, staying on a marked path.

For several minutes, most of upper Etna had been invisible to us, but the clouds which had fully-enshrouded us were now fracturing, lifting, starting to “dissolve”.

At 11.40 am we were probably standing a whisker below 3000 metres above sea level; the pictured, freer-roaming folks were, variously, a little higher up or lower down.

…well, members of a closely-related species…which is also sometimes seen on volcanoes, thousands of metres above sea level.

This post’s photos were taken just moments after the previous one’s; the very same lava flow was the relevant “destroyer”.

Both images show the same structure, in which humans had lived.

Q1: how many people died as a result of that lava flow?

Q2: how many humans has Europe’s biggest currently-active volcano directly killed during “recorded history”?

(I.e. since circa 1500 BC – a little more than 3, 500 years ago. Etna was already active for circa half a million years before humans began to “monitor” it)

This post’s photos were taken 11-12 minutes after the previous chapter’s…and further up on Etna’s southern slopes.

I think the relevant lava flows would have occurred during the 2002-3 eruption, which also destroyed most of a ski field’s infrastructure on Etna’s northern side.

Some humans venerate volcanoes, but lava flows pay no heed to a building’s “sacred” or “secular” intent.

We begin this series’ “on the volcano itself” section at its low point – in terms of altitude and photographic standards.

The featured image looks through the window of the bus.

At 9.44 am on the last September day of  2023, Catania’s metropolitan sprawl was now just behind and below us, whilst Etna utterly dominated our view ahead…and above.

If you look carefully, this post’s photos will give you a sense of how equally potent are Etna’s “destructive” and “creative”aspects.