I am proud to say that I was the first one to spot lava up close and personal. I looked down to check my footing, and there was one of those ubiquitous lines. This was a small one, maybe 2' long and 2" thick, and it was about 4" away from where my foot had come to a rest.
It took me a moment to stop staring. We'd spread out, and no one was very near to me. The wind had picked up and was loud, but I managed to get Niko's attention. He gazed at the ground, and then we exchanged one of those grins people share in movies when they've just stumbled onto hidden gold. Niko flagged down his father. As Stefan approached, I looked past him and saw a single radiant line stretching across the horizon behind him. After he was done gaping at the lava, I pointed out this long, glowing strip.
Stefan giggled and squirmed.
Where there'd been only vague glimpses of the lava before, it was showing up everywhere now. We noticed puffs of steam escaping from the ground. We climbed up over a steep rise to check it out, and there was this fucking pool of lava. It must've been ten feet or more across, though its shape was changing all the time. In some places, a mineral crust dissolved, exposing fluid lava, in dozens of blacksmith colors. In others, the hot lava cooled, taking on the color and texture of charcoal, beneath which spots of bright orange still glowed. Cinders floated everywhere above the pool, and a wall of heat projected out from its center. Stefan and Niko’s faces were transfixed and looked as ‘tho they were lit by a campfire.
Lava moves in these funny ways. It crawls like mercury, slowly rising, or sometimes it slithers like thick mud dripping off of a wall. Tendrils were unrolling from the edges of the pool. They'd crawl toward you, but you didn't have to move much. Outside of the main mass, the lava would immediately cool and after a moment, you'd be left with a solid black fragment.
Then there are the colors that are difficult to describe. To say that there are shades of orange, yellow and white, (very little blue to my eye,) while true, is clumsily phrased and poorly visualized. Again, my grasp of language is insufficient. I could make a list of shades from pale gold to angry brownish red, but I doubt that would do much good. Though it's liquescent, lava dances like fire, with color and form always changing. The intensity of the light varies too, so that some colors leap out at you suddenly, while others mellow and fade.
And in this case at least, pictures are not worth a thousand words—not the least because I am a lousy photographer and was packing a pretty rudimentary digital camera. I will spare you the sight of my handful of blurry pictures, not just because you can't find any sort of shape in them, but also because the colors are dulled to the point of lethargy. (There is one exception that I'll insert later, along w/ some thoughts regarding it.)
Earlier, we’d seen a few other people wandering around the field, but we'd lost track of them by now. There was no way of knowing how far any of them had gone or in what direction, with one exception: a young couple made up of a stout, pale young woman with dishwater blond hair and striking blue eyes, and a short, handsome young man with very dark skin and black hair cut in a sorta Prince Valiant bob—only messier n' wavier n' w/o the bangs. The woman's name was Natalie. The young man was less communicative and did not introduce himself, nor accept introductions from any of us. His name came up a few times, but only when Natalie was addressing him. It was an unusual name, and none of us ever heard it very clearly, so we remained uncertain as to what it really was. He seemed very protective of Natalie in an insecure sorta needy way, like he was worried that if she had contact w/ anyone else, she'd be gone in a sec.
Natalie and her (?)husband(?)boyfriend(?)pal(?) had seemed enthusiastic enough when we'd passed them earlier, but more recently we'd seen them dragging along unhappily. Natalie, esp., seemed beat. Both of them were wearing shorts, by the way, which qualifies them as officially insane. Or stupid. Or both. I'm dumb as a post, and even I realized it'd prob. be smarter to wear long pants. By the end of the night, I’d guess their legs looked like they’d had some sorta bizarre accident, involving barbed wire, charcoal dust and broken glass. They also wore plain old regular tennis shoes, which is just what I’d been planning to wear until I’d listened to Stefan’s well-warranted recommendations. Aside from protecting you from serious battery and scraping, I now have this vision of small pebbles of lava falling in between my shoes and socks as you I across the lava fields. Sorta like those freezing little chunks of snow do in the winter.
Anyway, Natalie and her companion were nearby when we found the lava and seeing us squinting at something on the ground, they came a-runnin'. Another guy, who we hadn't seen before, showed up at more or less the same time. We didn't notice him. We were too busy gawking at the lava.
He called out to us 'tho, and ever-exuberant Stefan began talking w/ him. Ever-dreamy (well usually anyway) Steve Forceman, P.I. remained transfixed by the lava. But behind me, I picked up the gist of the conversation: This fellow was telling Stefan how he'd been making the hike alone. It was only in the last 15-20 minutes that he'd really begun to question the wisdom of this course. He was relieved then when he saw us from a distance. At the same time, he was confused. Why were we all staring so intently into the space in front of us, when something truly amazing was right at our heels?
I turned to look, and sure enough, another pool of lava had appeared behind us. It was at least as big as the first one. Sparks were dancing in the moonlight above it, and we all moved in closer.
If the lava made any noise, I did not hear it. The wind was too heavy, kicking around the hot, dry air and humming in yr. ears. The lava was amazing, but we had been looking at it long enough that sheer wonder had become something calmer, if no less profound. It was funny: someone moved first. I'm not sure who, 'tho I know it wasn't me. Abruptly everyone was brandishing his/her camera like a buffalo gun. Having taken in a part of the lava fields, we were now all looking to put it across to others. For the wages of humanity are tourism, especially when something is profound.
Following suit, I started clicking off lil' digital images for my own personal posterity (if such a thing exists) and to use in boring the people back home. (Thank god the slideshow is staging a comeback! Who sez computers aren't a good thing?) I surmised, correctly—that I prob. wasn't gonna end up w/ much other than some blurry blobs and tracers of light. It was hard to be sure what I was even taking a picture, given the irregularity of the light.
The new guy offered me his sooper-dooper digicam w/ all sortsa features for the recording of both still and moving images. He seemed a little pushy. And loud. But it was a nice gesture that I accepted. You really could see a lotta details through the lens that the brightness of the lava otherwise made indistinct. It was very small stuff: rivulets and sharp curves and little bands of heat and light. I thanked the guy and returned his camera to him. Given the iris-narrowin' effect of the lava, everything else seemed very dark—sorta like when you look at a bright light in a dark room. You lose yr. night vision. So this was the first really good look I got at this guy who introduced himself as Mark.
I am suspicious by nature. Well, sort of. More like naive by nature and suspicious because I have reaped the harvest of my naïveté. Or something. I been burnt a lot, I mean, cuz I am stupid. So my eye was still kinda jaundiced despite this guy's manifest good nature. (Wow, is this the polar opposite of an experience I had later during this trip…) I was saddling him w/ a sorta commedia dell’arte hippie-indigent masque, for which I am now sorry. Maybe, you know, like one of those bean paste squirtin’ possible Jesus freak types even.
For one thing—sorta like that whole what-if-this-person-is-gay type issue that so many people have out there—even if Mark was a granola-munchin' self-righteous hippie wuss, who cares, so long as he was cool? For another, it is again a gross oversimplification—of another human being in this case—and that’s no way to run a railroad. Esp. the B&O Railroad…
