I love volcanoes – I’ve always loved them, for as long as I can remember. There’s just something about the power, the destruction, the unpredictability, and the intimate association with our history. They have always had some sort of meaning. Seriously – when I was a kid and my dad had to go to Sicily for two weeks of active duty with the navy reserves. I asked for some stones from Mt Etna, because I knew that was the volcano he would be nearest to.
He brought me home some lava rocks that he said he got from there. I can’t verify the authenticity of those stones, but somewhere in my mind I imagined him heroically climbing a smoldering lava flow to retrieve them freshly expelled and steaming from the side of the mountain herself. For years they stayed in a special place in my drawer and I would take them out and marvel at them.
Later, when dad had his military retirement benefits and I was still in school, the two of us flew together on military aircraft (“space available”) to Sicily. There is an entire story behind that trip, including finding our cousins at the end of the Autostrada in Palermo.
But that was my first big international trip (excluding Canada) and the first place we went to when we got a car (a terrible Fiat Uno that made an awful grinding noise in third gear) was Taormina.
When my friend AnneMarie suggested I go to Taormina for a day trip from Reggio Calabria, my first reaction was “been there, done that.”
But as I considered other options, an hour and a half trip didn’t seem so bad.
So this morning I got up and hopped on the nearby ferry for a 30 minute ride across the strait to Messina. There, I had breakfast in the train station while awaiting the train to Taormina.
The station in Taormina is 10 minutes from town by bus. The distance can be walked, but the roads aren’t really pedestrian-friendly.
The town of Taormina sits well above the Ionian Sea. Its history dates to 734 BCE when the Greek city state of Naxos stood nearer the seashore. That city was destroyed in 403 BCE, and Andromachus founded the town of Tauromenium with its remnants on the side of Mt. Taurus in 358 BCE. And a town has stood here ever since.
High above the town is the church of Madonna della Rocca. Dad and I made the arduous climb to it over 30 years ago. He would have been around 60, and I was just 20. It wasn’t an easy climb for me then and it wasn’t for me today (I think I’m mostly pretty fit right now). As I think about him climbing it, older than I am at this point, I realize that it couldn’t have been easy. I’m left wondering what I was thinking.
The church remains as uninspiring today as it was at the time (neither of us was impressed).
But the view from above is spectacular.
We grow with time, however, and what stuck with me from the visit today isn’t what stuck with me 30 years ago. The Greek Theater is what I remember from that trip, and it’s not a bad memory.
I’ve seen a lot of these now, and I probably know more about them than our guide did.
I appreciated the cella, or seating area. The Romans expanded it at some point and may have messed up the acoustics.
And people don’t give as much love to the skene, or backdrop, as they should, but this is a critical element of Greek theater design.
But during the tour today the guide pointed to the south. She said the town of Naxos once stood near the shore.
Then she pointed to the clouds, to where we could just barely see the very tip of Mt. Etna poking her snowy head out from behind the mist.
And I thought about Dad and those stones for the first time in an age.
I’m no longer certain where those lava rocks he gave me are – I think they may have ended up in the yard at the old house when we were packing things up after he had died and Mom was moving away.
But I still have them nestled away in my heart.
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