There’s a man strutting around the front of the bus like a rooster–chest out, chin forward, monitoring the action on all fronts. He quickly sacrificed his seat on behalf of an older woman; later, when another seat opened, he insisted that a nearby young woman take it, even though she was fine where she was. Now, he is constantly adjusting his jeans, swiping the front of his legs, tugging at the sides, patting his butt. His jaws are working overtime, grinding his gum into submission, while he shifts from foot to foot in an almost staccato fashion. Half-bald and half-shaved, he preserves a hundred or so flaccid hairs, angled precipitously with a half-dollop of product, a reminder of all that has been lost.
I wasn’t even supposed to be here today.
The plan dictated that this sunny Monday was for sightseeing in Naples. However, two unexpected developments called that into question. First, a nationwide transportation strike in support of Gaza was in effect, hitting full blast immediately after the peak of the morning commute. And second, the weather forecast called for heavy thunderstorms tomorrow, right around the time I expected to be atop Mount Vesuvius. Either of those could be individually ignored. Combined, though, and they demanded a change. Goodbye off-day–or see you soon, I suppose–and hello volcano. The smartest move, I decided, was to travel to Torre Annunziata, near the end of the stage, and walk it into reverse. That way, I could be assured of transport when I needed it, and allow my feet to take it from there.
And the new plan worked great. The bus into Naples was full, but not agonizingly so, and the train back out of the center was practically empty. After a quick cappuccino stop in Torre Anunziata, I was soaring uphill, Vesuvius dead in my sights. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Road signs pointed the way forward to the volcano, reinforcing my confidence; soon after, I shifted over to a parallel track that got me away from traffic. When that started looking suspiciously like a private estate, a creeping observation that was reinforced by a locked gate, a pair of men on a moped suddenly swooped in behind me, smiling and waving. I tried launching into an apology, but they waved me off. “To Vesuvius?” “Si, si!” They zoomed ahead, opened the gate, and then zoomed right back, laughing at the silly foreigner with abundant good humor.
I continued climbing. The minor road became a cement track, and before long it crumbled into dirt ruts, sprinkled with pine needles. Houses, once forming a thick line on both sides, were now largely absent, replaced with a few desultory agricultural efforts. And then, even they petered out, with only a sprinkling of trees blocking my view of the looming volcano. When my gps track turned left, I came face-first into a tall fence, but predictably enough there was a sizable hole worked into the base, making it easy to continue westward on a well maintained dirt road.
Easy, that is, until it dead-ended at a locked gate, one without any convenient openings baked in. Having explored both sides, I shrugged my shoulders and climbed over. After all the barbed wire fences I had to hop in the US, these are far less threatening, even at twice the height. Unfortunately, instead of solving the problem, this only amplified it. Because now I stood at another locked gate, only this was supposed to be the official entrance to the Vesuvius national park. Nobody was around. No signage indicated anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing to be done.
I stared at the gps in shock. I had double-checked this approach, even confirming its viability on Google Maps. And the problem was, there weren’t any great options for working around this impediment. As I’ve said before, in Italy there are two kinds of closures. Most common are the fences that don’t completely block the entrance, often with a well-trodden footpath looping around the obstruction. Those are advisory closures–suggestions that all who proceed should take care. I’ll blow right past those. However, there are also secured fences, in which no easy work-around is provided. Those are serious closures, impediments to be respected. (Why did I hop that one fence? The logic, I suppose, is that I was moving from the secured space to the public realm, not vice versa.) And so I turned my back to Vesuvius and descended, passing one luxury estate after another. Even here, on the most dangerous piece of real estate in Southern Italy, the high ground is for the wealthy. I reconnoitered every footpath, passing through small groves, around event grounds, and through vineyards. One worker spotted me and came over to help, acknowledging that the road is closed and trying to direct me all the way around the mountain to the main entrance, two dozen kilometers away. I thanked him and backtracked, having nearly completed a circle while burning two invaluable hours of early morning walking.
The only way to move forward, I realized, was to complete the circle, to duck back through that hole in the fence, and then to wind through a series of footpaths until I intersected the road farther up on the mountain, bypassing the official entrance completely. Would this create problems for me up the road? I had no way of knowing.
However, I discovered what lay behind that surprising closure. All around me lay charred earth, most of the grass and undergrowth eradicated completely, while a mix of trees stood overhead in varying states of disrepair. I might have guessed this was six months, or even a year, old. In fact, however, I later learned that the fire swept through here just a month ago, covering three square kilometers of mountain at its peak. I followed the road through one switchback after another, completely alone, surrounded by ash. It was peaceful, in a way.
And then I also learned that arson was suspected. You may feel like the world has fallen, that we’ve already reached our collective nadir, but I’m here to tell you that there’s always something worse, something more appalling to discover. Here it is: the different branches of the Italian mafia have recently started “weaponizing wildfires. More than half of Southern Italy’s many wildfires are intentionally set. Some of this is personal–to settle scores. Some of it is to clear land, opening the door for preferred projects. It’s also good business, in its way. The Italian “fire industry” has a vested interest in bigger and more frequent conflagrations. Seasonal workers, paid only during the most threatening periods, can earn much more as fire season expands. And that’s just the beginning. After the fires, there’s money to be made on clean-up and rebuilding, and the mafia is elbow-deep in that pie as well. The most twisted detail of all, though, involves the claim that the mafia is using fire to clear land in order to repurpose it for the installation of green infrastructure, like solar panels and wind turbines, allowing it to take advantage of clean-energy transition funds. Who knows what, if any, of that might be applicable to Vesuvius.
I encountered my first person just before the final ascent to the crater. Sitting inside an isolated ticket booth, just above a small, empty parking lot, was a man who seemed utterly unsurprised by my arrival. “Your ticket, please.” Oh, crap. As is the trend, tickets must be purchased online. I explained my dilemma–no phone, no wifi, no car. I thought I might be able to sweet-talk him into letting me through, but instead he–still kindly–allowed me to piggyback on his phone as a hotspot, so that I could make the purchase. Less than a kilometer later, I turned a corner and discovered the multiple tour bus loads of people, drinking three-euro cans of coke at the bar situated on the crater’s edge.
The descent was mercifully drama free, first switchbacking down that main road and then forking onto a dirt track wrapping around to the north side of the mountain. From that point, I had my choice of different mountain bike routes, which proceeded to be every bit as steep as that might suggest. In my traction-less Asics, this proved to be an adventure, but I’ll take it over everything that came before.
After everything that happened, only one thought was on my mind as I crossed back into my neglected hotel room: I wonder if that man has replaced his piece of gum yet…
