By Marcia DeSanctis
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Love Story category
The morning after we dropped off our youngest child at college, my husband and I sat in a bar at the St. Louis airport and shared a beer. “We did it,” I said. “We sure did,” he said. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Marcia. And you are…who exactly?”
I fell asleep on his shoulder on the Southwest Air flight and woke up in Hartford to the third chapter of my life. The moment coincided with another milestone. Mark and I had been married two weeks shy of twenty-five years and in a few days, we would flee the bleak and alienating emptiness in our home and return to the place of our honeymoon. When we were married, we lived in France, and as a working journalist I was often on the road—Russia, Europe, the Middle East. Mark used to travel too, mostly to marble quarries in Italy, where he procured stone to carve his sculptures. Only rarely did we venture out of Paris together. Two and a half decades later, I was traveling alone again for magazine stories, while he sliced away on granite works at his studio near our home in rural New England. We rarely took family vacations at all, and romantic getaways were simply not in our vernacular, or our budget. But for our so-called silver anniversary—he a mountaineer with roomy lungs who devours Adirondack peaks in winter, and I—an asthmatic morning walker, too practical and risk-averse for extreme adventure—we agreed on how we would celebrate it. We were going back to the volcano.
On our honeymoon, we decided to climb Stromboli as a larky excursion from our main destination in the Aeolian Islands, an archipelago off of Sicily’s northern coast. The day after our wedding, we flew to Naples and took a seven-hour voyage to the island of Panarea. The ride offered us a re-set, as if the spray from the racing idroscafo was baptizing us into another realm – the married one. We seemed lost in the limitless blue until Stromboli appeared, rising from the water. Mark snapped a photo of me—hair still pinned in my bridal chignon—with the glowering isosceles triangle to the left of my head. In a few days we would head for its summit. I recall looking up at the peak and suggesting we bail on the trek.
“Why are we climbing an active volcano?” I asked.
We had, after all, met freshman year in Geology 201, and might have known better.
“Because, why not?” Mark said.
After three days that passed in exhausted, pleasant repose, we boarded the ferry again in for Panarea for Stromboli’s small harbor. We followed a black, volcanic sand trail to our hotel. Along the way were scattered plaques affixed to buildings, honoring Ingrid Bergman and the director Roberto Rossellini, who scandalously fell in love while filming the movie Stromboli on the island in 1949. It cast a sexy glow on this far-flung place.
At dusk, five of us plus a guide gathered at the base. Mark and I stuck sweaters in our string bag—even I remembered, from Girl Scout camp, to do that from— as well as water and a few peaches. I was wearing a pair of old sneakers, and had no concerns about my fitness: I spent my life going up and down the Paris metro stairs.
“Probably it will not erupt tonight,” joked the guide. “Did you bring a torccia?” he asked.
No, we did not bring a flashlight. We we supposed to?
The walk began through fields of high grass and wildflowers, and soon the trail steepened. I followed Mark, who turned around frequently, offering his hand, which I mostly dismissed with a wave. He set the pace, this firm-footed mountaineer raised in Manhattan, my husband of five days. I watched the sure placement of his foot, the elegant lines of his flexed calf.
“This isn’t bad at all,” I remarked.
My shoes thumped on smooth loaves of lava, teetered on loose rocks. The group stopped to look down at the village, the sea, the shimmering black ribbon of beach. It suited me, the bursts of exertion, the satisfaction that followed, the gentle but unambiguous grade of the ascent. Intermittent booms and crashing noises indicated that we were nearing the summit.
“You have climbed 900 meters,” the guide said as the last slice of sun slipped into the ocean like a coin into a slot.
Soon after, darkness fell. We had been hiking for over three hours.
On the summit, there was moonlight, a spray of stars, and a faint glow over the ridge. A small wind grazed our faces with thin streams of ash. They curled and eddied, wormed down my windpipe and rushed into my nose delivering a thin current of sulphur. Mark removed a tee-shirt from the carryall, and said, “Put this over your face.”
We rounded near the edge of the craters—there were three— and immediately, a thunderous roar, and plumes of tangerine light that bowed as gracefully as a Vegas fountain. Pools of red bubbled and frothed, launching incandescent spears into the sky. A furnace of compressed gases and molten rock, seething with unknowable, electrifying, terrifying energy.
“Volcanoes aren’t subtle, are they,” I noted.
We perched on the trail’s backbone and I burrowed into the cradle of Mark’s bent legs, leaning my back against his chest. The temperature had dropped alarmingly, and he rubbed my thighs and knees. My eyes were burning and watery, but neither of us could take our eyes off the spectacle. The glow from the craters illuminated the first steps of the route back.
“The way down is quite steep,” said Marco. “But fast. We will be back in town in about an hour.”
Soon my calves were buried in a foot of ash, and it was difficult to move forward. I felt as if trudging through wet sand while getting forced backwards by waves. When I halted for a rest, my legs trembled from the tip of my thighs to my ankles. Balance was nearly impossible in the debris, and when I tumbled, my kneecaps struck hidden rocks, and my arms disappeared in the dust. Mark helped me up, encouraging me forward, kindly, as if I were a quarrelsome donkey. Within time, I learned to shuffle my feet along the bottom of the trail, but often my toes inside my thin sneakers jammed into a chunk of lava, initiating a quick shot of agony. The air blew a sharp chill over me, but perspiration carved lines through the soot on my face and neck. I was long past tears or even panic. I had passed into the tunnel of despair.
“You can do it,” said Mark. “Hold on to me.”
At last, we reached the bottom. Mark carried me to the hotel, and I spent the next day unable to move from bed except to nurse my cuts and bruises, while he explored the beaches. Dehydration, silica poisoning, sulfur toxicity, or simple fatigue—we were not sure. He crept in and out of the room with mineral water and crackers. Home, I decided, would be anywhere on earth I felt tenderness like this.
The volcano had mirrored only part of what I needed to know about marriage—about enduring challenges together, about defying the odds and persevering. Eventually, when I entered midlife, my life would become as volatile and unpredictable as that natural phenomenon. I plunged into a black sea of melancholy. I could not control the waterfalls of tears I wept preparing dinner or on the back roads of New England driving my children to this or that lesson, or the sensation that a domesticated artist’s wife was not what I was here on earth to be, or my faithless heart that detoured, for a while, away from my husband. When I quieted down my flailing self, we decided that, though our union was imperfect, our love was sturdy enough to still believe in and guide us forward. We made the thoroughly informed decision to continue to create the history of our shared life. In the wake of these troubled times, all three were stronger: he, I and us.
At our twenty-five year anniversary, there was much to commemorate: the two fine children we had raised; the marriage with its many faults we had accepted and rescued. The brutal physical labor that Mark was still able to do, our creative freedom, and the devotion we had for each other that had now lasted a quarter of a century.
Mark had lost almost all of his brown curls, but was as physically powerful as when I first knew him. I’d had a hip replacement and other arthritic woes, and my fertility was five years behind me. But we lived in the woods now, and daily, lengthy walks with our dog were a mainstay of my existence there. Plus, I drank less and exercised more at fifty-five than I had at thirty.
Crossing the sea to Panarea, we were jolted, as before, by the formidable sight of Stromboli behind us, rising from the water. Dread pooled in the spaces between my nerves, shifting the synapses toward a menacing interior shadow.
“Why are we doing this again?” I asked.
“Come on,” he said. “How could we not?” he said.
It was one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and in the intervening years, had erupted five times. After three days in Panarea, we once again took the morning boat to Stromboli. It dropped us at the dock on a clear, blue day and after walking the black sand trail and checking into the same hotel, we walked back into town to arrange our climb, past the marble plaque with elegant script: “In this house, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini shot the film “Stromboli” in the spring of 1949.”
Excursions to the top were now tightly controlled; when we registered weeks earlier, we were instructed to pack fleeces, windbreakers, bandanas. Flashlights and headlamps were required, and footwear had to be approved. If they were not, all was available to rent or buy in many of the outdoor gear stores on the island. Now, they provided a yellow hardhat and other safety gear. These new provisions convinced me that the hike would be easier and less frightening, too.
Summer smells of roasting fish, garlic, and burnt charcoal from a pizza oven breezed through the main square as we snapped up a few peaches, for old time’s sake. At cafés, tables tinkled with laughter, and servers poured wine, ignoring the fools heading up island’s namesake attraction. Meanwhile, a fog had inched onto the island, and the temperature was plummeting. I ran to one of the rental boutiques, and snapped up a waterproof fleece.
We started off. I turned my head with a longing gaze at the tableau of a relaxed summer evening on the piazza. Veering into the trail rushed a meadowy smell of grass and finally, sulphuric gas. This unlocked memory incited a twinge of nausea in solidarity with my former self, sick in bed.
The strain in my legs told me that the trail I had leaped along previously seemed to have become an obstacle course, engineered, by nature and with no discernable logic, from massive volcanic boulders. I was out of synch with the mountain, my body and my husband. My good hip—the one that had been replaced—was tender and weak. The bad hip —the one that needed to be replaced—was worse. Other joints popped and crunched, sending dull waves of pain through my thighs, back and knees.
“Take it slow,” Mark said, hoisting me over the rocks.
The wheezing started almost immediately, and I realized that I had forgotten my inhaler. Panic blitzed my nerves and my body moved forward at great effort. A couple of slow, deliberate breaths—in then out—seemed to wipe the panic and sulphur from my lungs.
“Have some water,” Mark said. “You’re doing great.”
“Did you bring the peaches?” I asked.
He handed me one, and I chomped its sugary, butter-yellow flesh, rubbing the dribble of juice into my arms.
We trudged onward as the sun receded behind creeping cloud cover. Colder, darker, this was not the same climb as before.
“Is there a different trail up?” I asked the guide. “I mean, could I have climbed another trail twenty-five years ago?”
“There are several trails, but this is the guided one, and always has been.”
Time can burnish memory into such a brilliant luster, it will blind you. There was no wedge of blue sky left.
“Do you think we’ll see anything on top?” I asked him.
“It’s very cloudy,” he said.
My mind cycled through maxims about positive thinking, about powering through, about determination and grit—everything this mountain had implied the first time I scaled it. Throughout my life, though, my default has been to shrug my shoulders and call it a day, to believe that effort wins battles but not wars. The light mantle of relinquishment brushed my shoulders as I tasted my words.
“I need to get off Stromboli,” I said.
“Almost there,” Mark said.
He was right. Within minutes, we summited.
At the top, we entered a pummeling of dense drops of mist and ash. Particulate matter seemed to sneak into every pore and onto every strand of hair. Our guide handed out respirators and protective goggles, but small cinders slid behind our glasses and into our eyes, making them twitch spasmodically. My lungs were hot, as if I had smoked a pack of Camels. The ash churned more wildly than I remembered, because this time it was not a still summer night but an unseasonably cold and damp one.
Our guide ignored questions about our prospects for a fireworks show, shielding us from disappointment. There was so little visibility we could hardly see our feet as they paced forward. And then we felt it. The dull rumble and boom, then a gasp from deep inside the earth’s molten core. We ducked into a structure resembling a bus stop to block the wind as we piled on our last layers. I plunked to the ground.
“Halfway there, living on a prayer,” I said.
“The hard part is over,” Mark said.
“No honey. The hard part is going down. Remember? Relatively speaking.”
We moved up to the ridge where, last time, we saw flames of fire in the craters. All was obscured by the heavy clouds we were actually inhabiting. Now, there were only ominous, terrifying booms and tremors. I leaned back into his chest to rest. A long-married couple, seeking comfort in the exact way we had done before. Mark’s arms enclosed me, that body I knew every inch of, that had slept beside for twenty-five years. We were literally the same people, except of course, we weren’t.
I birthed, nursed and nurtured our children. From the earliest days, we took our roles in marriage and held fast to them, rarely diverting from what was expected and what we were willing to give. It was my choice and it was the way we knew, the way that clicked into its groove on each morning. He asked for almost nothing.Not me. Ceaselessly, patiently, he held me up. I was not proud that I needed another person to complete me. So many people thrived and blossomed in divorce, or in never having married. In my silent hours, I envied them their strength and self-possession, and courage to call their own shots.
But here I was. The love I had for Mark after big trials, little ones, and the numbing static of the day-to-day was mad and true. I hardly believed at all in marriage anymore, certainly not as the default expected of every man and woman on earth. And yet, I was made for this one. The empty vessel of our wedding day had been filled with our son, our daughter, thousands of mornings and boring, beautiful life. Fine, but I still had to get down Stromboli.
Mark pulled me up to standing. My body felt geriatric and it was iffy if I could even walk at all. Before me was the task of descending into a pile of powdered volcanic matter in moonless, starless dark.
“We will wait a little longer.” The guide was chipper, overcompensating for the dud of a show.
All of a sudden, visible through the clouds we stood in, was the faint orange glow from fire leaping out of the fumarole. It traced a single, vibrant curve against the sky, making me think of St. Louis, the Gateway Arch, and my baby far away in college. With another crash, the mouth was once again blacked out by a curtain of vapor, leaving only smudges of pink and sunset peach flashing through the murk. We waited for one more blast, but the show ended behind those pale glimmers and echoing booms.
In my mind, I genuflected to this mighty mountain. It was tired, content, and had no need to prove itself. It would perform for nobody, and act according to no rules. I also nodded a silent farewell, as I knew I would never again return to the lip of this volcano.
Even with the headlamps throwing light on our path, ash, night and fog made the path seem impenetrable as we marched to the downhill trail. We fashioned something like a conga line: I held onto Mark’s waist, someone held on to mine. The guide was his breezy self, a confident nocturnal creature who could make his way perfectly in the dark. Breathing, seeing, and walking were all endurance feats, and I steeled my mind for the more difficult leg of the climb.
My feet skated under the dunes of those cinders that I suddenly remembered well, and not fondly. My hips struggled to thwart the forward motion of my body, and unseen rocks rolled under my feet, propelling the rest of me.
I glided forward as we moved silently through the night. But soon, the more I concentrated on the motion, the more natural the movement became. My muscle memory returned, and the gliding became easy and loose. We made a speedy pace, and the mist cleared and air warmed enough for me to stop and remove my windbreaker. The path flattened into swaying grasses and shoulder-high flowers. We were at the bottom.
One does not join hands with someone in jumping off a cliff—or in summiting active volcanoes—without the adventure being seasoned with absolute mortal terror. In the physics of a long marriage, the way up was a struggle and the way down was a piece of cake. It is telling that in this strangely representational paradigm, this sine wave of a relationship, this bell curve of life, that twenty-five years earlier, it was the exact opposite.
We walked across the plaza to a café – the Ingrid. My legs were sore—good sore—and my lungs were clear. Over the years, we endured, sometimes in synch and often not, weathering time together in the only direction it ever will flow. Stromboli would breathe air and fire until it was no more, and every few years, unleash two-mile-high ribbons of flame and rivers of blistering lava. It was many things. Burning, boring. Surprising, predictable. Exciting, disappointing. Moody, alive. Always changing, gamely soldiering on. There was a lesson here about marriage so obvious I laughed out loud.
On the boat the next morning, Mark snapped the same picture from our honeymoon, with my head beside the great triangle of Stromboli, rising from the rippling Tyrrhenian Sea. Its craters were billowing plumes of thick, gray smoke. We motored away from the volcano, towards Panarea and beyond.Towards a familiar yet unpaved life that was still ahead of us, just as it had been twenty-five years earlier.
Once again, we were just beginning. Like all of life, this moment was a cliffhanger.
~ ~ ~
Marcia DeSanctis is a former television news producer who worked for Barbara Walters and Peter Jennings at ABC News, and at CBS’s 60 Minutes. She is the New York Times bestselling author of 100 Places In France Every Woman Should Go, and regularly contributes to Vogue, Town & Country, Departures, and Travel & Leisure. She has also contributed to many other publications, among them: The New York Times, Tin House, Creative Nonfiction, Roads and Kingdoms, The Coachella Review, The Common, Entropy, BBC Travel, National Geographic Traveler. She has won five Lowell Thomas Awards for excellence in travel journalism, including one for Travel Journalist of the Year, for her essays from Rwanda, Russia, Haiti, France, and Morocco.