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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.
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…well, members of a closely-related species…which is also sometimes seen on volcanoes, thousands of metres above sea level.
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Construction of a cableway on Mount Etna began in the 1950s.
The first version began operations in 1966.
Etna first “intervened” in 1971, destroying the cableway’s upper section.
Various other eruptions have since wreaked varying degrees of destruction, resulting in repeated closures, rebuilds and realignments.
Since the spring of 2023, the cableway and its (new) cable cars have been as they appear in my photo.
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Today’s image finds us still in “our” bus.
In relation to yesterday’s post, we were another six minutes further up Etna’s southern flank.
When I took the photo it was 10. 05 am on 30 September 2023, and we were probably circa 1300 metres above sea level.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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The image is a “looking down, from space”, google-view of Mt Etna and its eastern Sicilian surrounds, in summertime…no snow.
Marked thereon are most of the human settlements relevant to the “Aspects of Etna” series-proper.
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The featured image’s vantage point is the grounds of the castle for which the relevant hilltop village is named.
Castelmola is directly behind Taormina, and very steeply above it.
The eastern shoreline of Sicily sits circa 530 metres lower than did my camera at 7.20 pm on 02 October 2023,
Deploying a wide angle lens enabled me to “capture” a deal of the jawdropping view we were enjoying, albeit at a cost – my image “flattens” rather than flatters Etna.
Its summit is more than 2,800 metres higher than Castelmola’s.
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We spent the afternoon of 01 October 2023 in a Sicilian village, a little northeast of Etna.
Spectacularly sited atop a steep hill, Motta Camastra is celebrated for its oft-huge, very tasty walnuts; they are sometimes marketed as “Etna walnuts”.
Having just attended the village’s annual walnut festival, we were walking to the bus which would take us back to the valley below.
At 6.19 pm, sunset on Sicily’s east coast – circa 20 kilometres distant – was 25 minutes away…
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