Stromboli – the only continuously active volcano in Europe. Also one of the seven Aeolian Islands to the north of Sicily. The island bears the same name as the volcano, since that is all there is: the steep cone rises straight out of the sea. Its top is 980 metres high, but what the visitor sees, approaching by ship, is no more than the very tip of the cone: the roots lie 2,000 metres lower, on the bed of the Mediterranean.
Stromboli will disappoint nobody. Like a kind of ‘Old Faithful’, its craters spew thundering fire fountains into the air as regularly and reliably as the whistle on an overheated pressure cooker. Anyone on the summit is treated to a spectacle of indescribable power, so frightening and fascinating as to touch one’s innermost being. The intention may have been to spend just an hour there, but one finds oneself staying a full night.
Sometimes though, the fiery soul of the mountain is stirred with an overwhelming force, which sends a glowing lava flow racing down the black burned slopes of the Sciara del Fuoco and into the sea. At those times it is better not to make an attempt on the otherwise benign summit. The local guides know the moods of their mountain and will certainly warn anyone when it is unsafe.
A number of fishermen and their families live on the island. More precisely, there are two small villages – San Vincenzo on the northern coast and Ginostra in the south-west. They are built on old lava flows – and, sitting in their squat houses spooning their fish soup, folk often hear above them the rumble of the mountain. They have got used to it.
To a rock climber, Stromboli is of no interest. It is for the adventurer. British mountaineers attempted the traverse of the steep north-westerly coast, from one fishing village to the other, at sea level, passing below the Sciara del Fuoco, the ‘course of fire’. Threatened by lapilli slides, they struggled forward, sometimes in, sometimes out of the water, through niches and caves, moving across sand and ashes until, blackened but happy, they finally reached the other side. It was never repeated. For their part, the fishermen hold such goings-on as madness, and prefer to travel by boat. Only very rarely does anyone cross the island by climbing over the mountain.
I met one of the British ‘madmen’ once on the cliffs of the Welsh coast: Dennis Kemp, an excellent climber and mountaineer with a lot of experience behind him, though white-haired, was full of youthful enthusiasm. We spoke about the beauty of different places around the world, where the sea and the mountains meet, and while we were sitting on our airy pulpit, with the surf pounding the slabs below us, he told me about Stromboli. Near us, meanwhile, a pair of climbers moved slowly on tiny holds across ‘A Dream of White Horses’, the famous traverse high above the foaming crests of the waves. Surrounded by all these impressions, a plan ripened gently in my mind: I would experience the volcano for myself. The opportunity came sooner than I expected. When I returned, somewhat battered, from Greenland, my daughters hugged me and scolded: ‘Papa, we’re not letting you go off again for a while.’ Teresa thought the same. No doubt they were right: it was time to stay at home. But hardly a week had gone by before I was conspiring to make my convalescence rather more eventful …
Black sand, glittering and overlaid with a yellow-gold shimmer when viewed into the sun; black, rotten lava monsters emerging from the foam of boiling waters. The dazzling houses of San Vincenzo, the narrow coastline around the island. Higher, the dominating mountain skyline, rusty and black, with patches of dark green on the lower slopes. Fast moving clouds – drifts of smoke? A distant rumble, echoing down from the sky ... the volcano.
‘… é normale!’ It’s normal, an Italian fisherman comments with a smile. Another wears an apron, which boasts in big red letters: I TALK ENGLISH EVERY INFORMATION. A handful of tourists cluster round him – the old sailor (I take him for that), home from the sea, has managed to find a way of using his experience to augment the meagre livelihood of an islander. But the tourists soon return to the ship which brought us here from Naples, and continue on to Lipari, to Panarea, to Vulcano ... Only a few remain on Stromboli.
We find a room to stay, very cheap, with old bedsteads and mattresses, but breakfast is included. What luxury! We spread out our sleeping-bags – Karen and Hilde, my two daughters, only eight and fourteen not hide from our hosts that we want to go to the top of Stromboli tomorrow, and overnight there. Overnight, as of course in the dark you can watch the eruptions so much better.
Our hosts, though, meet this announcement with an expression of sorrow: only last week there had been an accident. A boy lost his way, coming back in the dark. He fell over a cliff. Dead.
Fall to one’s death on this mountain? Such a possibility had never crossed my mind. We have hard hats with us, sleeping-bags, a bivi bag, a stove, torches ... but no rope.
Next morning we buy a hemp line from a fisherman, not very long, but tough …
Clouds are racing over the ridge up there, sailing by incredibly fast. There’s a strong wind from the west. Patches of sunlight and shadow dance across the steep slopes. It looks unfriendly. Some tiny dots are moving up on the skyline. Somebody, then, has gone up …
We don’t get away till afternoon. The wind has died down and the sun is now shining pleasantly, warmly. A comfortable mule track leads through the tight Mediterranean scrub ... Spanish broom; metre-high spheres of spurge, what we call Wolfs Milk; and in between, the countless blue and white flowers of rosemary, with its characteristic scent; pink blooms, too, and greenery …
The black sand and the lava cliffs become inkier and inkier as they recede into the depths, and the sounds of the sea soften to a murmur. In the end, only the hum of insects and the sweet smell of the maquis surround us. We meet some islanders descending to their village, and a group of young lads with enormous rucksacks and colourful anoraks overtake us as we move leisurely upwards. Clearly, they want to pass the night up there, too. Soon they are lost to view. A jungle of tall, yellowish cane, which covers the slopes now, has swallowed them up.
It is getting steeper. The mule track has given way to a narrow path which winds in a tight zigzag up between the shrub and cane. Sometimes it is deeply incised in the soft ground, then dissipates into vague traces across loose rubble and dark volcanic rock. Leaning on our sticks and ice axes, we gradually work our way up, following a rounded ridge that is flanked on its right-hand side by a sheer drop. Obliquely below us, we can see the steep, grey course of the Sciara del Fuoco. The sea is shrouded in a yellowish haze, and to the west a grey bank of cloud has built, getting darker all the time. ‘What do you think about the weather?’ Teresa asks anxiously.
‘Not much,’ I reply, but continue upwards. When we stop for a breather I address my little crew: ‘You had better know that I’m in no mind to carry this enormous pack up, down, then up again. We have got everything we need for a fine bivouac, and if the weather turns bad, we wait till it gets better.’ No objections are raised to that. They have never bivouacked before, anyway – high time they did!
The strong wind blows up into a storm. Whenever we draw close to the exposed edge, sand whirls about our ears, blown uphill from the depths of the Sciara del Fuoco. We put on our pullovers and anoraks. The branches of the bushes bow low before the wind’s blast and Hildegard’s long blonde hair streams like a battle standard. She leans into the wind with all her might, but little Karen has pulled her hood over her ears and does not look at all convinced ... Teresa takes her hand and coaxes her gently upwards, quietly, patiently, as always. Coming from a big Italian family, she is used to having other people to take into account, many others, and is resigned to not always being able to do what she wants. Probably she would prefer to be down at the bottom now. But – turn around here?
Shouts from above, trampling in the bushes, two figures appear. One of them, a bearded guy, stops. ‘You’re not going up now?’ he yells at me, staring at the children. ‘Not in this storm, for heaven’s sake?’
I protest that he doesn’t understand. ‘We’re keeping an eye on things. If it doesn’t improve, we can still go down!’ The bearded man throws me a glance as if I were mad, and hurries after his companion.
‘These people obviously haven’t come prepared with bivouac gear,’ I reassure my troops. Maybe they have, I think, and just don’t like bivouacking ... but I keep that to myself. It is good for the children to get used to storms.
Another group clatters down. ‘Mamma mia!’ and ‘Padre impossibile!’ yells a dark Italian woman, regarding our slow-moving party with wide eyes. An impossible father ... But my children, of course, know that already. ‘Papa, perhaps we had better go down,’ a small voice issues from under Karen’s hood.
‘Wait a bit, sweetheart. It’s not raining yet.’
Is that more trampling and shouting from above? Somebody else about to undermine our resolve? ‘Come on, let’s tuck ourselves in the bushes for a rest. We can wait till they’ve all gone.’ And I distribute nuts and – chocolate – a good father. (I’m having to polish up my image.) As we sit in the scrub, the last group scampers downhill. Now we have the mountain – and the storm – to ourselves. All possibilities open.
Perhaps we can still find somewhere to bivouac that has a view of the eruptions, as we planned to. Some little niche higher up, out of the wind? I rather doubt it: already it’s beginning to get dark. But to sit it out here and see nothing – that would be totally boring. We’re all agreed on that. So then, higher! Unfortunately, it really is dark now. We get out the torches ... A little later, at a steep rocky section, the hard hats and fisherman’s rope are pressed into service as well. With care, we manage to get across, but it’s worse on the other side: no bushes, not even smaller plants, nothing to slow down the wind, and no trace at all of somewhere to bivouac. In these gusts, the occasional rumble of the volcano can hardly be heard, it sounds like collapsing séracs on a glacier ... I admit defeat! ‘Okay, gang. We’d better go back. We can’t stay here … ’
Down in the groove of the path, we find a spot where it is horizontal and smooth, sheltered from the wind among the canes, and tucked into our sleeping-bags, down jackets and bivi bag, preparing something hot to drink becomes more interesting to everybody than any eruption …
The moon draws a glittering ribbon across the sea. Incredible. The wind has vanished, and the sky is clear! Suddenly, just like that. How long was I asleep? ‘Isn’t it beautiful, Papa!’ whispers Hildegard. She has raised herself on to her elbow and looks down. Karen and Teresa do not stir. Above, a thunder-roll makes the air tremble. A small cloud takes on a red glow for a second or two.
‘Wait! I’ll creep over to the edge and take a look!’ Another thunderclap ... followed by a whoosh! Beyond the black silhouette of the ridge glowing spheres rise into the sky, silent, then gently float down again. I grope my way back. ‘Hilde, come … ’
The spectacle bewitches her. ‘Papa, we must get higher!’ Stromboli’s craters lie on the north-west side of the mountain, somewhat below the summit and directly above the Sciara del Fuoco. The higher we can climb this ridge, which is blocking the view to them, the closer and better we should be able to see the eruptions. I wake Teresa. ‘The weather is fine now! Hildegard and I will go up a bit higher. We’ll be back in a couple of hours. Then I’ll take you and Karen up. We couldn’t go all together, not in the dark. You sleep for now. Buona notte!’
How different everything is without the storm. Hildegard and I are roped up, it is true, and we are wearing our helmets, but the difficulties are minimal, elementary you might even say. Nevertheless, we must not fall. To each other we seem only unreal shadows, as we feel our way up the black rocky step which stopped us before. Again, I can’t help thinking: how different without storm! How lucky we are …
We gain height briskly. Even at fourteen, Hilde is almost as tall as I am. She was only seven when we climbed the Gran Sasso; later other interests took over. With mounting excitement we grope higher towards the invisible thunder, which emanates from somewhere behind the dark rock. What will we see? Above us, the outline of the ridge stands out clearly, so it cannot be far now. Another loud rumble. Instinctively, we quicken our steps, as if we might be missing something irretrievable, and pant up the last few metres, moving as fast we can.
The ridge. All is quiet. We are standing on a horizontal shelf. Soft moonlight bathes the dark bulk of the mountain, as it does us; it draws our shadows out as silent companions on to the rocky, sandy ground. Deep down, almost intuitively, we sense a mighty semi-circular cauldron, which must be where the Sciara del Fuoco begins. Beyond it, considerably higher than we are now, is the summit. It still seems a long way off, unattainable and dream-like. In a wide curve, our ridge, seamed with black shadows and indistinct obstacles, leads up to it. As far as that? I am surprised.
Suddenly there appears below it something like a giant flower of fire, trembling, opening, blossoming within seconds high into the night sky! A thunderous roar …
We are both speechless.
It is so beautiful that at this moment I feel no regret that we failed to establish our bivouac on the summit; on that so distant spot …
Although …
‘Papa, that is magic! We have to get up there!’ whispers Hildegard.
‘Much too far at night.’
‘But I want to get to the top!’ she insists. ‘We’ve got this far ... and there’s still plenty of night left.’
Perhaps my daughter is right. Nothing is unattainable, except what you have already relinquished. ‘Okay, then. Let’s give it a try!’
I realise something, and it touches me in a strange way. I was almost prepared to accept the situation, to give in ... Not Hildegard! Joy seizes me, a sort of exultation that I cannot explain to myself – as if something would come of this night, something to link her and me in a vitally new way, different from before. It is true I am in front, leading, but for the first time I feel my daughter is an equal rope mate. More than that, it was she who made us continue.
We are feeling our way along the ridge. It is wider than we expected. Many of the obstacles turn out to be shadows only, and we are able to detour a real rocky barrier. To our left, the ground plunges away, down, one imagines, to the fishermen’s village of San Vincenzo. All of a sudden the earth below our feet changes to a fine, soft, yielding sand! It gives the sensation of trudging uphill through heavy snow. Above us, the summit outline has noticeably altered. Another few steps and it has changed again! That means it cannot be much further now – it is just the moonlight that makes it seem so far away!
‘Hilde, another half an hour and I think we will be up … !’
We whoop for joy. The mountain is ours, already it’s ours ... has been all the time!
And the magic of this night. Again and again the explosions come, every quarter of an hour ... In between, the volcano bubbles and sloshes in its mighty pots: liquid lava, the red glare of fire in the darkness. We see them diagonally ahead, and much nearer now. Phew! What a stench of sulphur! Acrid fumes engulf us, blowing over the sandy ridge from the crater field. And there is a prickle on the skin, like a million fine needles. We hurry on through it. Steeply now we are plodding up the last few metres. The outline is quite different now – it can only be a few more minutes …
A fire fountain, very close. We stop. It is so beautiful; you could never get used to it.
It is two o’clock in the morning: the ground becomes hard again. Lava slabs, a curving crust above the void. We take the last steps to the summit.
Here it is!
Who could have imagined that we would still make it up to this spot tonight? The moon, the sea, the silhouetted coastline of the whole island below us, the red glow from the crater field, the tangled contours of the mountain ... over there, on the other side, outlines of ridges and troughs. Far to the south some twinkling lights and a shadowy line of coast: Sicily! A cold wind is blowing up here. We might even walk over to the other side of the crater rim ...
We follow a sort of track that appears to lead down into the crater field. It is a real temptation to keep going closer – but at a bivouac wall with inviting stone ‘seats’, we stop. The mighty pots are simmering and hissing – still some distance away. Nevertheless, the next explosion almost yanks us from our perches in fear and excitement … With a deafening thunder-roar, a cascade of liquid rock, white-hot, one or two thousand degrees in temperature and weighing many tons, shoots skyward just in front of us, splitting into a giant bundle of rays, parabolas, and a hundred ribbons of light, arcing back to earth. Rocks patter as they strike the edge of the crater, a fiery rain that continues to glimmer on the ground, changing from white-yellow to orange to red, to crimson – till all the dots of light go out, disappear, and only the dull glow of the bubbling lava, reflected up from the depth of the craters, penetrates the darkness.
We wait for the next eruption.
Somewhere deep down on the ridge Teresa and Karen are sleeping in their bivouac. They cannot imagine what we are experiencing at this moment ... but, they could not have made it this far at night. Perhaps tomorrow morning?
It is such a pity they don’t see this.
Of the five craters down there, three are active – and the largest of them erupts regularly about every ten to fifteen minutes. This is the one we are specially waiting for! Its fire fountains may reach one or two hundred metres high. The second crater only erupts now and then. And the third is a real character: we call him the Swindler. This hooligan is the noisiest of the lot: he roars like a jet testing its engines, only louder – he roars, and roars ... yet nothing appears, until shortly before the end of his performance, he spits, one by one, three or four red glowing tennis balls at crazy speed, diagonally into the dark, where they rise higher than all the other missiles from the craters. It looks so funny for all that noise to produce so ridiculously little, and whenever he does it, we can’t help laughing. For all its otherwise fantastic show, the Stromboli Theatre has its clown, too. Once, he even seems to respond to Hilde’s shouted encouragement and spits five balls!
Cold creeps into our bones, but how can we ever drag ourselves away from here? Every so often we reassure each other that it is not that bad – but next time we will bring a sleeping-bag with us. Next time? Who knows when that will be?
One thing is certain: never in our lives had we dreamed of such a night. Perhaps it is the more impressive because we are here totally on our own. And because we had to fight our way up here. And ...
Many things are possible only once in life – you have to seize the opportunity when it comes.
While we descend to Teresa and Karen, it is as if we walked slowly out of a strange dream. We have to keep telling ourselves it is still true. For how long? Words and pictures encompass only a space; inside that, reality gradually dissolves, like smoke.
Later on, while Hildegard catches up on some sleep at our bivouac, I climb up with Teresa and Karen to the shoulder of the ridge. We see a couple of wonderful eruptions – and Karen hugs us both with delight.
But the dawn is gradually creeping in, covering mountain and sky in pale blue, draining the shine from the glowing shells ...
There is no point in going on to the summit any more. ‘From up there,’ Teresa says wistfully, ‘it must be even more beautiful.’
Another time.
There is one landscape in Italy that could be called a mountaineer’s nightmare: the channel country near the mouth of the Po River … For centuries people here have been draining the swampy ground, tough people reclaiming land while the mighty river continues dismantling Alps and carrying them to the Adriatic, pushing the coastline further and further eastwards. Porto Maggiore, as its name implies, once the biggest harbour, is now a small rural town more than thirty kilometres inland – as the crow flies ...
And crows, that’s another thing. There are literally hundreds of them in this land of pulverised peaks. Normally I like birds and their songs, and I certainly don’t go along with those people who see the crow as a bird of ill omen, but even I consider there are perhaps too many in this flat land, which has unexpectedly become an important station along my life’s way, and very much a proving ground. Here is where Teresa was born, grew up. Her mother, too.
And the channels? This is a landscape you cannot hurry through: wherever you walk, wherever you go, you soon come to a dyke or channel far too wide to leap across.
A weird sensation for a mountaineer.
There is something else, too: the Padrona di casa – a special and peculiarly Italian figure. The literal translation ‘patroness of the house’ does not really get you very far. Since I have had the benefit of a growing personal experience, I will attempt to describe the phenomenon more exactly.
In appearance, usually as solid as the farmhouse she rules over.
Once you have entered the house, you are in her domain. Woe to the person who dares sneak something out of the fridge at night (admittedly a shortcoming of mine!). It is for the Padrona to decide when people eat. She keeps all objects and subjects under her control. Night and day.
Never wash the dishes, nor the plate or cup you have just used. Don’t try to be helpful – leave well alone; thus you avoid offending the Padrona.
She does not care whether Mount Everest is in Africa or Asia, or if India is in South America – or not; just so long as the borders of her property are right (and respected).
No matter how the watchdog howls and lunges on his chain, do not set him free. The animal might dig up the lettuces, or even run into the house ... a terrible thought for the Padrona.
She is busy in the house from morning to evening, cleaning, cooking (great!), and dealing with the laundry. Like the Forth Bridge, as she finishes one end, she starts again at the other. Anyone who expects to find a speck of dust in the Padrona’s house is sadly mistaken.
Entertainment during the day for an Italian Padrona di casa is provided by visits from the scattered clan of relatives, the network of which is almost as intricate in the surrounding area as that of the channels. On these occasions, the normally sacrosanct ‘best’ rooms are thrown open.
And, finally, since anyone who comes within her circle of might will do his utmost to follow the Padrona’s unwritten laws, for fear of provoking her indignation, inevitably all outside connections, contracts and relationships cease at once to be valid. As the husband of a Padrona’s daughter, you are not competent to make decisions – indoors or out – however much you grind your teeth. It is the Padrona who has an absolute claim over love and respect.
On the other hand, if you manage to observe all her rules, you can be sure she will do everything for you …
For a mountaineer, that is not, as we in Austria say, an easy tart to swallow. Knowing what to do in a sudden breakdown of weather, or how to avoid stone fall, to face the dangers of a mountain – none of these prepares you to cope with a Padrona di casa in the network of channels of the Emilia-Romagna (a district, incidentally, where Mussolini was born).
To be sure, my mother-in-law is a helpful person, but I do not think she considers me much of a catch for her daughter ... and one has to understand that. In this channel landscape, I fit about as well as a Matterhorn in a cabbage patch.
So, we are not always in harmony: especially when she keeps the shutters closed all day long … she loves the dark, and I the sunshine. It must provide an entertaining spectacle for an observer: a house where the Venetian blinds snap up and down continuously. Two tough characters fighting for the light of day.
These were my impressions, recorded in my diary, in 1980. Thinking back now, I realise how much better things have become since we built a big, new, roomy house on top of a hill near Bologna, a house for six people, including Teresa’s sisters! Half of the shutters stay closed and the other half open, and we respect an invisible borderline, as it were between England and Scotland. Two dogs run freely together and mother-in-law generously feeds everyone in style, tends her flowers and, well, is the boss on her side of the house. We can smile now at the old trench warfare. Still, anyone who imagines the Italians as an easy-going people, knows only half the truth. And a Padrona di casa is a very special regional delicacy ... In the interest of my fellow mountaineers, who might find themselves marrying in Italy, let me return once more to the entrenchments (as described in my diary) ...
Besides my wife, there was the dog who demonstrated himself in favour of my visits: he jumped for joy whenever I arrived, knowing I would cast off his chain, at the same time urging him not to exhume any more lettuces! Of course, I wouldn’t leave the door open and give him the opportunity of slipping into the house – I was full of high endeavour to keep the peace! And, though things changed only slowly ... my wife assisted me and I admired her for her patience. I knew she would never turn into a Padrona di casa (at least, Good heavens, I hope not!). Two full summers I endured in the landscape of the channels for her!
It was not just stoicism that kept me there, we were extremely fond of each other. Even so, I felt that the striped pattern of the Venetian blinds so perfectly echoed the watery network outside. That I did not end up a ‘pulverised’ mountaineer, is simply because I could not give up the hills.
Even today, in Bologna, I live far from real mountains – they are in these pages as I write, and frequently I long for them. Months and years are in these pages – you give up a lot of present for the past. But in the channel landscape I learned fortitude.
Ceci, my son, was born there – he is stubborn and full of fantasy …
Some things never change, even today: without warning the Peuterey ridge suddenly erupts out of the vegetable garden over the hills ... and I am off again! Teresa and Ceci know that I have to go whenever too much time has passed. It is the other life. Father will come back, sooner or later. That is the way it is with mountain guides, sailors, cameramen – their home has no walls and no fence.
(Will mother-in-law still feed me? Perhaps I had better scrap these pages in the Italian edition! After all, in Italy, they know well enough what a Padrona di casa is … )