One thing I come to realize: volcanoes are beautiful. And scary too. And how close we are to them. Surrounded by volcanoes or in more adept phrase: full of volcanoes. I lived exactly between a no-longer-active Arjuna and the tallest volcano, Semeru. Waking up, I used to open the window to its sight. It was always white at its cone and sometimes coughed some smoke. But I’d never consider it dangerous. I wondered why it kept coughing that the trees and vegetables in my garden covered with thin film of dust. Fine gray dust. When it coughed the morning became more chilly.
When friends and I climbed Papandayan, two years before it erupted, it was my first encounter with an active volcano. Hmm, I can still recall the sulphur smell! Then I had chances to get close to Dieng, Bromo, Krakatau, Ijen, and Gede. Those pungent smelling volcanos. The smell penetrated into the deepest layer of clothes! Even those wrapped in plastic inside my backpack!
How mighty they are! How beautiful they are. Rich in vegetation. People wrote, Indonesia is blessed with rich soil. Volcanoes play huge part in it. When I climbed up, i found water is always abundant and beautiful plants are everywhere in sight. Lilies, wild berries, erica bush, sweet smelling leaves and bark, wild sugar cane, snowbells, fuchsias. everything! The birds are most melodious there and I was always awed by the sight yonder from where I stood. Yet they are also scary. Now i think I understand how people in the past developed volcano worship.
The scenes on TV are heartbreaking. The tsunami in Mentawai, the Merapi eruption, and the flood in Jakarta. For now I can’t laugh at Magica de Spell cartoon. The feline-eyed witch-duck is distilling some concoction inside Vesuvius. It ain’t funny now.
