Vesuvio 🌋

Can a physical place inspire personal growth?

This story was published in Open Doors Review 7. It is available for digital purchase here.

For thousands of years, humans have been living around the mystical Bay of Naples, a geological rarity filled with underground cities and petrified civilizations. I didn’t know this when I moved here. I arrived with little understanding of the city the Greeks nick-named Partenope.

I arrived in this powerful city a fragile woman, having just lost a baby. There was little time to grieve as I was thrown into the chaos of Naples. I stumbled over Italian, bumping up against verb tenses and tripping against gender agreement. I got lost in the grubby, bustling alleyways of the Spanish Quarter, where the shouts and screams of the locals made me jumpy. I was a delicate California poppy in a vegetal desert, all signs of greenery beaten down by the muggy dirt that saturated the city streets.

All summer long, the exhaust fumed from the scooters, and the honking blared from the streets. I couldn’t think straight, let alone cross the street amidst the wreckage of cars that sprawled haphazardly between the sidewalks flanking the road. The humidity smacked my shirt to my back, and the sweat dripped down my legs. The air sat so still I felt it might suffocate me.

At night, when I was cool and dry in the cool air of our hotel room, away from the stimulation of the city, I felt the cavernous holes in my chest, heavy and exhausting, distracting me from sleep.

In the city, the locals sensed my despair. A taxi driver took pity on me and spent the entire ride lecturing me about Neapolitan culture. He urged me to see every day in Naples as a test. He implored me to adopt the Neapolitan philosophy of patience and tolerance. Others, like the cashiers at the grocery store, gently touched my arm and called me “dear”, reminding me I forgot to weigh my vegetables, a rare moment of tenderness from the hardened characters I encountered.

As the months went by, so did the ups and downs of life abroad. I missed the ferry and remembered my quest for patience. I experienced a “Neapolitan shower” (the dumping of dirty mop water over a balcony) and conjured up tolerance. I cried over a failed negotiation, but drooled over a plateful of mussels and pasta by the sea. I watched the sunset over Vesuvius from my window, the sky over the bay turning the color of Campari Spritz.

When I witnessed a Neapolitan woman shake down a train attendant, I marveled at the way Italian fury exits the body as soon as it enters, as mine sits, wallows, and dampens my spirits.

In the winter, we hiked Vesuvius. In between the two cones, we passed the “Valley of Hell” - a dry, bleak basin without any shade cover. Our shoes sank into the black sand, created from pumice, ash, sediment, and minerals. I threw a stone into hell’s valley and screamed, my rage finally released. I was a fizzing bottle waiting to pop. When we reached the top, the smoke billowed out of the cone itself, matching my fuming wrath.

In nearby Campi Flegrei, an area that was once home to volcanoes, a phenomenon called bradyseism causes frequent earthquakes. The first time I experienced it, I was on my couch and felt tiny vibrations. The advice Neapolitans give about the earthquakes is the same thing they say to me when I tell them I want to have a baby. “Don’t worry,” they say, over and over, a line used thousands of times per day. The powerful energy of Vesuvius casts a spell on its citizens, creating a visual and mental block towards futuristic thinking. Why worry when we could be dead any minute?

The next summer, I visited the volcanic island of Ischia, where the thermal hot springs render the ocean boiling hot in some areas. My rage had subsided, but I was left with a desperate urge to know when my baby will come. Against all the advice of the locals, I worried. I dipped my body in the springs and tried to burn the worry out of me. It lingered. I floated in the Amalfi’s salty ocean and tried to relax the worry out of me. It persisted.

In Vesuvius’ eruption in Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD, it wasn’t the lava that killed the citizens, it was the burning hot gas billowing from the volcano. Some scientists say the gas was so hot it vaporized their body fluids, others say it was a slow asphyxiation. This burning, suffocating need to have a baby took over me.

We tried again and again, but there was nothing but negatives. When I opened the windows in my kitchen, a strong sulfur smell wafted in, reminding me of the hydrogen sulfide leaking from the fumaroles in nearby Campi Flegrei. I started to accept that this is my life now. The uncertainty, the hope, the disappointment - they come and go as easily as the putrid scent of rotten eggs.

The constant was Vesuvius. Shining on a clear day, or hiding under puffy clouds, Vesuvius was always there. The more I became aware of her, the more I adopted the Neapolitan mindset, allowing the rhythms of local life to ground me in the present day. I greeted her with my cup of coffee in the morning as the mopeds honked on the street below. I said goodnight as I flicked off the lights in the evenings, unphased by the random explosion of firewords next door. I noticed her creases and grooves, the curves of her hills, and her gentle slope towards the city. I observed her and slowly let go of the need to know.

It’s 1:30 am. My eyes flick open as the bed rumbles steadily. The palazzo is trembling, but I know what to do. I walk to the door frame, calm and steady. The shaking stops, and I move to the window and look out at the sea. It’s the second earthquake of the day. Increases in the intensity and frequency of earthquakes can mean that volcanic activity could happen soon. When I look out my window, Vesuvius is lurking over us. I meet her gaze. I may have come here cracked and fissured, but I’ve learned to hold my ground.

I’ve missed you dear readers! I got a lot of notifications from the gyms here in Naples about their pausa estiva (summer break), and I decided I needed one too. It’s too hot to think straight. Have you ever felt like a place is testing you? Has a physical place ever inspired you to grow as a person? I look foward to catching up in the comments.