Vesuvius
I wrote most of this the same day we hiked up the mountain but initally thought it was too melodramatic and really over-the-top to throw out here. Then I remembered hardly anyone comes here so who cares right? So without further ado, chapter 380-whatever, wherein the author and his wife journey up the volcano:
A breeze wafted some of the sweat from our dusty, exhausted bodies as we sat under the umbrellas of the “Fast Food” café a hundred yards from the Ercolana Curcumvesuivio stop. I had finally done it. I had set a goal for myself and achieved it. I had help, of course, there isn’t a soul on Earth who achieves anything without help whether he knows it or not. I was, and still am, giddy with achievement. Sure it’s achievement just to my fat, out of shape, old ass but looking up the steep, pumice-gravel-filled path to the summit of Vesuvius I never thought I would make it. Even after probably logging 2 miles just walking around the ruins of Herculaneum and up and down the hill to same we still managed to do it. At one point I was afraid if I kept pushing myself I would have a heart attack but something told me no, it’s OK, you can do it, you’ll make it. Think I know what, or who, or my memory of who that was. Quit whining, hitch up your skirt and do it, big boy.
Yeah, that guy.
When we finally got up there, saw the crater, stumbled through the lower souvenir shop to the upper I was on an incredible endorphin and adrenaline high. I felt like I had done it for me, for The Mrs., for Pete who isn’t here to do it anymore, for Pete's older brother Tom who walks with canes now because the fucking meningitis ruined his spine. It’s not a big achievement for a fairly fit person, for someone who maybe eats a bit less than me or has better genetics or doesn’t have knees and ankles already being chewed away by arthritis from both sides of the family but for me it is a big achievement, big as it gets at this point in my life and it’s my prize, my victory, fuck you, you can’t have it or take it from me. I kept putting my feet in front of one another in 90 plus degree heat direct sun no shade my sweat dripping into the pumice dust as I chewed on grit that drifted up into my mouth.
On the way up I remembered being on the trails with Pete, never serious camping trips while I was involved but rather overnight beer bashes where the heaviest, bulkiest item in my pack, well, the pack that I borrowed from Tom because I never owned my own pack, anyway the heaviest item was a 5 liter mini-keg, usually of some German Oktoberfest brew because we typically hiked in the fall. Still, for me the hikes were tiring because I wasn’t in shape like Pete and Tom who hiking high peaks in the Adirondacks even into Pete’s early days with cancer. Tom would sprint ahead but Pete would always look out for me, encouraging, pushing, cajoling.
After he died we had a memorial fall hike, a year later I think, 2002, we hiked out in Harriman, some folks did the Lemon Squeezer rock which I had done a few times with Pete on day hikes and even one overnighter but I took a pass that time, the same time I quit roller hockey with my back going and my knees going and my waist expanding and age creeping in at not even 40 but there you go with my genetics folks, oh no I know that’s not an excuse this is America where everyone’s equal, everyone can do anything, sorry about that there’s no such thing as anyone having an advantage or disadvantage. Yeah, right.
So we went on this hike and we talked and laughed and drank and smoked and stared at the fire and at one point I got very very silly and tossed the empty mini keg into the campfire and everyone laughed until we heard bubbling and whistling and saw steam start to blow out of the top of the keg because we hadn’t quite gotten all the beer and with a loud sudden FPLOOOOM! the spigot of the mini keg flew skyward and we all ducked. That was my last night in the woods with that crew, with Tom as we all raised a glass to Pete around the fire, tearfully and joyfully and in celebration of a human being who charged through 34 years of life madly spreading joy and merriment and confusion and worry and disbelief and ultimately shamed every living person I have ever known by the way he faced his own death. So Pete was there, and at one point when I began to consider that partway up was enough, look at the views, look at how beautiful it is just from here I felt a hand in the center of my back shoving me through the middle of my knapsack, pushing me forward, my feet moving almost of their own accord as I had certainly chosen not to go on at that moment. I turned around and there was nobody behind me.
Of course in my quiet, air conditioned hotel room comfortable now with a glass of wine I consider this a figment of my imagination, an invention of an overheated brain and then I consider further and realize it doesn’t matter what I think in this instance. While I was being shoved forward another memory took hold, the memory that drove me to consider the walk up the mountain to being with. I was in elementary school, second grade maybe and for a science project I wanted to build a volcano. Well, as a guy who is all thumbs when it comes to building anything I asked my father to help. A few hours later he has a cone-shaped chicken wire frame built and he his pouring and shaping concrete around it to form the shape of the volcano. My brother jumped in to help as I recall though that may be faulty but I remember the two of them happily building this whole layout and my father, having no patience for my lack of talent in such matters told me as usual to “help by not helping” so I wandered off at the masterpiece was finished. After the mountain was dry and spray painted grey my brother troweled globs of cement down the sides to simulate lava; when these dried he painted them orange. My contribution was limited to putting a blob of cement on the side of the volcano as a ledge and sticking a plastic pterodactyl on it. Oh yeah, and I got to place some plastic dinosaurs in the fake vegetation glued around the triangular plywood base of the thing. I was disqualified from the science fair that year, of course because it was obvious a second-grader did very little of the work. Still, the volcano sat in the basement for years until the base decayed and pieces broke off and we threw it out sometime, I didn’t care, I didn’t make the thing. Years later I wondered about how everyone in my generation connected volcanoes and dinosaurs as children but hey, it was the 1970s. Things were different then.
It was with some satisfaction as I dragged my weary body to the summit of Vesuvius that I noted that really, it looked nothing like a grey spray painted cement cone with orange lava forever glued to the side but was instead an Earthbound moonscape of black craggy rocks and earth and an astonishing view of the surrounding region. This Vesuvius was my volcano, my achievement; there was no taking this away from me because somebody did it for me. I did it for me. And the Mrs. did it herself and for me for without her planning this never would have happened. So we stood together at the top of the mountain, black grit and pebbles of pumice all around and in our shoes and coating my knapsack and almost at once we began to talk about Pete and how present he felt to both of us, how the feeling came to each of us independently as neither of us were speaking much toward the end of the walk owing to the dust and the altitude and he heat and the strain.
Again, a cooler head in a cooler room says that such a phenomenon was generated from the inside out and not the outside in, but wherever it came from it was a reminder that when the time and the circumstances are right you can exceed your limitations even if it is only for a moment, and it is those moments can bring you a flood of pure joy that make the rest of the mundane time spent on Earth worth enduring.
A breeze wafted some of the sweat from our dusty, exhausted bodies as we sat under the umbrellas of the “Fast Food” café a hundred yards from the Ercolana Curcumvesuivio stop. I had finally done it. I had set a goal for myself and achieved it. I had help, of course, there isn’t a soul on Earth who achieves anything without help whether he knows it or not. I was, and still am, giddy with achievement. Sure it’s achievement just to my fat, out of shape, old ass but looking up the steep, pumice-gravel-filled path to the summit of Vesuvius I never thought I would make it. Even after probably logging 2 miles just walking around the ruins of Herculaneum and up and down the hill to same we still managed to do it. At one point I was afraid if I kept pushing myself I would have a heart attack but something told me no, it’s OK, you can do it, you’ll make it. Think I know what, or who, or my memory of who that was. Quit whining, hitch up your skirt and do it, big boy.
Yeah, that guy.
When we finally got up there, saw the crater, stumbled through the lower souvenir shop to the upper I was on an incredible endorphin and adrenaline high. I felt like I had done it for me, for The Mrs., for Pete who isn’t here to do it anymore, for Pete's older brother Tom who walks with canes now because the fucking meningitis ruined his spine. It’s not a big achievement for a fairly fit person, for someone who maybe eats a bit less than me or has better genetics or doesn’t have knees and ankles already being chewed away by arthritis from both sides of the family but for me it is a big achievement, big as it gets at this point in my life and it’s my prize, my victory, fuck you, you can’t have it or take it from me. I kept putting my feet in front of one another in 90 plus degree heat direct sun no shade my sweat dripping into the pumice dust as I chewed on grit that drifted up into my mouth.
On the way up I remembered being on the trails with Pete, never serious camping trips while I was involved but rather overnight beer bashes where the heaviest, bulkiest item in my pack, well, the pack that I borrowed from Tom because I never owned my own pack, anyway the heaviest item was a 5 liter mini-keg, usually of some German Oktoberfest brew because we typically hiked in the fall. Still, for me the hikes were tiring because I wasn’t in shape like Pete and Tom who hiking high peaks in the Adirondacks even into Pete’s early days with cancer. Tom would sprint ahead but Pete would always look out for me, encouraging, pushing, cajoling.
After he died we had a memorial fall hike, a year later I think, 2002, we hiked out in Harriman, some folks did the Lemon Squeezer rock which I had done a few times with Pete on day hikes and even one overnighter but I took a pass that time, the same time I quit roller hockey with my back going and my knees going and my waist expanding and age creeping in at not even 40 but there you go with my genetics folks, oh no I know that’s not an excuse this is America where everyone’s equal, everyone can do anything, sorry about that there’s no such thing as anyone having an advantage or disadvantage. Yeah, right.
So we went on this hike and we talked and laughed and drank and smoked and stared at the fire and at one point I got very very silly and tossed the empty mini keg into the campfire and everyone laughed until we heard bubbling and whistling and saw steam start to blow out of the top of the keg because we hadn’t quite gotten all the beer and with a loud sudden FPLOOOOM! the spigot of the mini keg flew skyward and we all ducked. That was my last night in the woods with that crew, with Tom as we all raised a glass to Pete around the fire, tearfully and joyfully and in celebration of a human being who charged through 34 years of life madly spreading joy and merriment and confusion and worry and disbelief and ultimately shamed every living person I have ever known by the way he faced his own death. So Pete was there, and at one point when I began to consider that partway up was enough, look at the views, look at how beautiful it is just from here I felt a hand in the center of my back shoving me through the middle of my knapsack, pushing me forward, my feet moving almost of their own accord as I had certainly chosen not to go on at that moment. I turned around and there was nobody behind me.
Of course in my quiet, air conditioned hotel room comfortable now with a glass of wine I consider this a figment of my imagination, an invention of an overheated brain and then I consider further and realize it doesn’t matter what I think in this instance. While I was being shoved forward another memory took hold, the memory that drove me to consider the walk up the mountain to being with. I was in elementary school, second grade maybe and for a science project I wanted to build a volcano. Well, as a guy who is all thumbs when it comes to building anything I asked my father to help. A few hours later he has a cone-shaped chicken wire frame built and he his pouring and shaping concrete around it to form the shape of the volcano. My brother jumped in to help as I recall though that may be faulty but I remember the two of them happily building this whole layout and my father, having no patience for my lack of talent in such matters told me as usual to “help by not helping” so I wandered off at the masterpiece was finished. After the mountain was dry and spray painted grey my brother troweled globs of cement down the sides to simulate lava; when these dried he painted them orange. My contribution was limited to putting a blob of cement on the side of the volcano as a ledge and sticking a plastic pterodactyl on it. Oh yeah, and I got to place some plastic dinosaurs in the fake vegetation glued around the triangular plywood base of the thing. I was disqualified from the science fair that year, of course because it was obvious a second-grader did very little of the work. Still, the volcano sat in the basement for years until the base decayed and pieces broke off and we threw it out sometime, I didn’t care, I didn’t make the thing. Years later I wondered about how everyone in my generation connected volcanoes and dinosaurs as children but hey, it was the 1970s. Things were different then.
It was with some satisfaction as I dragged my weary body to the summit of Vesuvius that I noted that really, it looked nothing like a grey spray painted cement cone with orange lava forever glued to the side but was instead an Earthbound moonscape of black craggy rocks and earth and an astonishing view of the surrounding region. This Vesuvius was my volcano, my achievement; there was no taking this away from me because somebody did it for me. I did it for me. And the Mrs. did it herself and for me for without her planning this never would have happened. So we stood together at the top of the mountain, black grit and pebbles of pumice all around and in our shoes and coating my knapsack and almost at once we began to talk about Pete and how present he felt to both of us, how the feeling came to each of us independently as neither of us were speaking much toward the end of the walk owing to the dust and the altitude and he heat and the strain.
Again, a cooler head in a cooler room says that such a phenomenon was generated from the inside out and not the outside in, but wherever it came from it was a reminder that when the time and the circumstances are right you can exceed your limitations even if it is only for a moment, and it is those moments can bring you a flood of pure joy that make the rest of the mundane time spent on Earth worth enduring.
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