Category: Americas and Eurasia and Africa

 

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 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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If it was otherwise unchanged, but lost its biggest, highest mountain, Sicily would still be a mountainous island.

Etna, however, is very much higher and larger than all other Sicilian mountains.

It is also singularly recognisable, singularly influential/consequential, and hugely more dynamic than any other Sicilian peak or range.

Across a surprisingly large area – weather permitting, and provided one is not in some other mountains’ valleys –  one can be looking over Sicilian countryside and not thinking of Etna at all, only to realise, suddenly, “there it is!”

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This post’s location is the same as yesterday’s, except that it is looking at a different section of the same winery cellar’s largely “lava rock” wall.

I think that the only human activity which could have given rise to the pictured “splash of colour” is the excavation that created or reshaped the cellar’s walls. (the cellar may or may not be a reshaping of a pre-existing cave)

Thus, newly-exposed to air, iron-rich sections of long-buried lava (from one of Mt Etna’s many eruptions) would begin to oxidise.

Guess why the long-exposed surface of Western Australia’s iron-rich Pilbara region is so very red?

Looking, as I took the photo at 1.18 pm on 02 October 2023, I thought I had probably worked out what was going on.

Now, I am not convinced that my assumption was correct.

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After a very enjoyable morning in Randazzo – engaging with its artisan gelato and granita aspects, as well as its most notable “lava rock” church – we headed to lunch at a nearby winery, in very attractive countryside.

Its cellar was, essentially, a lava rock cave

I do not know whether the cellar was a modified, pre-existing cave, or a cavity largely or entirely made by humans.

In either event, its walls offered more than one surprise…

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Doubtless, this post’s subtitle could serve well as the latest addition to “metal” music’s ever-burgeoning array of named sub-genres.

However, this  post’s “lava rock” has no connection to any musical “rock”.

This lava rock was deployed, with “sacred” intent, as a building material.

You are looking at part of a notable Sicilian church’s exterior.

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The featured image looks across the stage of Taormina’s ancient amphitheatre, through to Mount Etna.

Unsurprisingly, this venue is often described as the most beautiful of all “ancient Greek” theatres.

There is a (Roman) reason for my inverted commas…

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