Robin George Andrews - Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond

SUPER
VOLCANOES

SUPER
VOLCANOES

What They Reveal
about Earth and the
Worlds Beyond

ROBIN GEORGE ANDREWS

W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

Independent Publishers Since 1923

For the Nans, Nanu, and Grandad Charlie

U ntil that day, I had never been sat on by a cloud. It came as quite a shock: I had briefly fallen asleep, or at least thought I had, on the jet-black pebble-covered ridge of the mountain. I had dissociated my exhausted self from my surroundings and had drifted off, lost in the sky. I was only brought shuddering back to reality when a collection of condensing water, which quite frankly should have been minding its own business several hundred feet downslope, was given a helping hand by a persistent blast of wind. It tumbled up the steep flank nearby, bubbled up over the ridge, and came to a stop on my head. It was like I had suddenly perspired ice; I shuddered as my neurons fizzed with surprise. Mischief managed, the cloud promptly burst and faded away along the thin rocky path.

Joe, I said, calling out in the twilight. Joe?

Something stirred next to me. Yeah?

A cloud just ambushed me. It sat on me. I think.

Okay, he said, rising to his feet. That does it. He winced. By the look of his crinkling face, his limbs, like mine, ached a lot more than he had anticipated. Joe emphatically jammed his walking pole into the crunchy ground. Lets keep going, he spluttered. He wasnt about to become similarly soaked.

About nine hours earlier, we were wading through humid air and being poached in 104-degree Fahrenheit Tokyo heat. But now, the mercury had plunged to 14 degrees. Enveloped by an old US Navy coat and several extra layers underneath, I could still feel the chilly aeolian blades cutting me into ribbons. The air up here was also getting increasingly less packed with delicious oxygen, so breathing took a little more effort than usual. Joes thermal shielding was more hastily assembled: he was adorned with a woolen, buttoned-up shirt and as many T-shirts as he could fit on in one go. We were fueled by little more than water and the 20 or so seaweed rice balls we hastily purchased earlier that day at a minimart in Akihabara, a hyperluminous Elysium of video games, manga, cat cafs, bleeps and bloops.

It was 2013. I was more than halfway through my PhD, something I was working on in New Zealand. Along with the usual storm of anxiety that most people experience while trying to put together a doctoral thesis, I was also thousands of miles from the vast majority of my friends and family in a country that, although an aesthetic wonder, turned out to be a little too tranquil for my likingnot the sort of place I was content living in for several years. I stuck it out, but loneliness was a frequent visitor.

Every now and then, I managed to escape and travel beyond the bounds of that far-flung archipelago. In 2013, a volcano-centric scientific conference was taking place in Japan, way out west in a bustling city named Kagoshimathe perfect excuse to spend some time exploring my favorite place on Earth. After the academic gathering, I spent the next few weeks wandering through forested islands taken right out of a Studio Ghibli movie, getting flown over viridian bowls and peaks in a helicopter, weaving through neon-illuminated drink-filled izakaya, ducking into crimson shrines to hide from the thumping, glorious rain, trying to break the top-100 score rankings on a rhythm-action game in the arcades, slurping ramen noodles enthusiastically, and going to a madcap music festival. To my enormous relief, I felt my spirits were sky-high. I was alone, but no longer lonely. My mind was erupting with newfound energy.

I also, perhaps unwisely, decided to climb Mount Fuji. This mountain is famed for its staggeringly beautiful symmetry. During a few weeks in the summer, when the ice is less pervasive, you can climb it. The climb is not particularly hazardous, but it gets steep, rocky, and extremely cold near the summit, 12,400 feet up. I thought I was making the ascent alone until, out of the blue, my childhood friend Joewho had not long ago quit his job and had traveled to Thailand to learn kickboxing, because why nothad suddenly turned up in Tokyo after hearing I was there. His arrival proved to be a vaccine for melancholia.

After a few days of gallivanting about the capital, we both decided that we would clamber up Fuji together. The only problem, aside from Joes lack of proper clothing and shoes, was that the only day we could head up the mountain was the day before Muse, our favorite band, was playing at the festival. It was going to be a close call, but being decidedly risk-prone, we steeled ourselves, caught a bus to one of the stations on the lower flanks of the mountain, and began.

After a few hours, the treetops gave way to the clouds, which passed below us as the Sun slipped over the edge of the planet. The light of sparkling cities failed to break through the thick blanket of weather downslope, permitting the night sky to explode above us.

We eventually reached a small collection of huts. The owners of one gifted us a delectable Japanese curry and, afterward, a set of pillows for a 90-minute nap, allowing our lungs to adjust as quickly as they could to the thinning atmosphere. We stepped outside and continued our climb, when a streak of light caught my eye. Then another. And another. And another!

Until then, it had completely passed me by that we were climbing Mount Fuji during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. With no artificial light to sully the night, we had a front-row seat to the combustion of hundreds of fragments of a lonesome comet, hiding on the fringes of our cosmic neighborhood.

Soon after, an inky blue paint began to splash itself along the skys floor. It hit us that the Sun was rising, fast. We were told by another group of climbers on the way up that the path thins out near the summit. There, climbers have to wait in a heavenly queue, taking turns to step through the shrine gate that marks the entrance to the mountains peak. If we lagged behind, we would be stuck up there too long to make it all the way back down to the festival.

We began to run. The next few hours were a blur. I remember stepping past people who had begun to faint, tripping over the increasingly sharp rocks, watching as our previously invisible pathway up became flecked with reflected light. We paused for just a few moments when our legs felt like they were on fire, lying down on a ridge away from the path that, as it turns out, was the perfect spot for a cloud to ambush us. With five minutes to spare, and with acute breathlessness, we made it through the gate and collapsed on a ridge at the very top of the mountain. The drastically reduced air temperature and pressure made us both feel like zombies, but we didnt care. We made itand for the only time in my life, I could feel what seemed like a single beam of sunlight on my face as the Sun crested the horizon. All the climbers who had summited the mountain applauded in collective respect and relief.

Against all odds, we also made it to the gig on the outskirts of Tokyo later that evening. We even found the energy for a few celebratory drinks beforehand. It remains one of the most exhilarating 24 hours of our lives. And we both owed much of it to that majestic mountain, that staircase to the Sun, cometary fires, and alien stars.