Beyond Pompeii

Occasionally I find it intellectually rewarding to read a book on a topic I know next to nothing about.

I cautiously read a few random pages looking for prose that will pique my curiosity, drawing me into the author’s thesis or the fictional world being created.

Here’s a sentence that lured me into volcanologist Tamsin Mather’s Adventures in Volcanoland: What Volcanoes Tell Us About the World and Ourselves: “Volcanoes underpin our history, even when we are not directly aware of them. They are an integral part of the rich tapestry of the world upon which we find ourselves, where we are able to marvel at its bounty and beauty and to try to reason out its meaning.”

Bristol, England-born Mather weaves her personal history and fascination with volcanoes from a young age into the story of the science of volcanology. When she was 10 years old her family visited Mount Vesuvius, a volcano on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Its eruption in A.D. 79 obliterated the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, killing thousands and rendering the area uninhabitable for centuries. The ruins and the death casts of Vesuvius’s victims left a lifelong impression on Mather, who would go on to become a professor of earth sciences at the University of Oxford and a fellow at University College, Oxford.

Earth is over 4.5 billion years old. “Evidence for volcanic activity in the form of dated lava goes back billions of years,” notes Mather. “Volcanoes were there when the first basic life evolved somewhere in our planet’s ancient waters.”

The word volcano is derived from the name of the Roman god of fire and metalwork, Vulcan. For millennia, the fear and storied devastation of volcanic eruptions formed the basis for many myths. “Volcanoes were the chimneys of hell, their activity a consequence of human sins, their roars the screams of tormented souls,” explains Mather.

Why study volcanoes? “Volcanoes can devastate and destroy but they are also revered and can be integral to local lives and livelihoods: fertilizing soils, attracting tourists or providing power, water or raw materials.” If we can understand more about volcanoes, their eruption cycles, the levels of gases they emit (some deadly), and their impact on the earth’s environment, lives may not only be saved but improved. It is also personal for Mather: “Through my studies I have come to think about some volcanoes as individual characters.”

A volcanologist must be in terrific physical condition. This is not a desk job, but rather one of field work under physically trying conditions. As Mather writes about ascending the still-active Villarrica in Chile, carrying heavy scientific equipment in her backpack, the reader can almost feel her muscle strain, but also the pure joy in reaching the day’s destination for scientific research. “Villarrica’s ice cap is the remnant of a great icesheet that covered this area during the last ice age…kicking footholds into the icy footsteps of those who had gone ahead….Stamping our way above the broken cloud deck…hot magma was not far from the surface.”

There is obviously a fair amount of science in Adventures in Volcanoland. It is not overwhelming, and I don’t believe a book about the history and study of volcanology could credibly bypass discussions of lava creation, magma, isotopes in rocks, and tectonic plate movement. I admit, though, I had to read a few sentences more than twice to understand them. For example: “[H] auling the batteries and filters up Lascar [also in Chile] allowed us to determine the ratios to sulfur dioxide of the acidic halogen halides like hydrochloric acid and particles like sulfuric acid haze fuming from the summit.” Honestly, maybe there were a few sentences I never really grasped at all, but this did not impair my overall understanding of the specific topic under discussion.

Mather writes lovely prose, making this journey around and into volcanoes highly pleasurable. She’s adept at metaphor: “The layers sag between the volcano’s sides, like an elaborate igneous version of the hammocks on sale in a Masaya artisan market,” or, “One flow from the early 2000s, stretched like gnarled knuckles toward me down the volcano’s flanks, before getting lost in the verdant greens of the jungle.”

My favorite chapter is the discussion of volcanoes on other planets and more-distant moons. In 1971, the Mariner 9 spacecraft orbited Mars and supplied evidence of the tallest volcano on the planet, Olympus Mons. “Its shape is reminiscent of the great shield volcanoes of Hawaii and its summit crater and caldera complex looks not unlike Masaya from above. [Masaya is a volcanic site in Nicaragua largely studied today for the variety and toxicity of its gas emissions.] But it is on an entirely different scale…stamping out a footprint the size of the US state of Arizona.” Mather ruminates for a moment and her thoughts wander further to the insights gained from volcanoes in outer space: “[U]nderstanding volcanic emissions also plays a small role in helping us in our quest to detect potential locations that might already host extraterrestrial life among the plethora of newly discovered exoplanetary worlds.”

Volcanoes shape our understanding of the world around us, both through myth and science. While there is much more to discover, the research provided by volcanologists and books like Mather’s provide crucial knowledge and insight.