An ocean of Possibilities

@sum.err.pun

INTO THE inferno

ALL around me, the landscape is otherworldly and stark. Ahead of me, steps lead down into a crater. In the distance, against an electric blue sky, an enormous white plume of cloud poses as smoke billowing from the mountain top. And it would be fitting too, given that this is the Piton de La Fournaise (“peak of the furnace” in French), one of the most active volcanoes in the world. To gaze upon beauty of such scale is to be humbled by the magnitude of the natural world’s grand scheme of things.

Well, that’s all the time you have to ponder on life and the universe before it’s time to continue on down the stairs; there’s a long way to go, after all.

Around 30 minutes of climbing down and I’m finally on the floor of the Enclos Fouque caldera – the hollow left by magma after an eruption. Vast fields of dried-up ‘rope’ lava stretch out in all directions and, when I look up at the huge cliffs that form the wall of the crater I just climbed down, I can’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed. I’m only going up to a smaller crater, Formica Leo, one of the more recent pop-ups on the main crater floor. There are yet others on the same path, going towards the centre of the crater, to the summit, a trek of another couple of hours.

I, sadly, don’t have the luxury of time. Still, not too unfortunate, given that my next appointment is lunch. d that isn’t too far away, in a cosy little restaurant, nursing a glass of pre-lunch ‘rearranged ’. The rolling hills outside, bathed in soft sunlight on my way up to the volcano, are now covered in mist.