The Summer of Ash and Lightning

The international wires this week carry two dispatches from the same Sicilian mountain. One tells of an American hiker, twenty-nine years old, struck by lightning on Mount Etna's eastern slope, in an area closed to visitors because of recent volcanic activity. The other reports that Catania's airport has again suspended flights as the volcano spews lava and ash into the peak summer travel season. Read together, they form a single story about the distance between the mountain as it is advertised and the mountain as it is.

Etna is Europe's tallest active volcano, and the world's coverage of it tends toward the picturesque: a plume of smoke, a river of fire, a postcard of sublime danger. But the mountain does not distinguish between the tourist seeking a photograph and the resident seeking a commute. The ash that halts flights in Catania also falls on the lemon groves and the rooftops of villages that have learned to live with the mountain's moods. Foreign reporting captures the spectacle; it less often captures the patience.

The death of the hiker, reported by the Guardian and the New York Times, raises a question that the wires pose only implicitly: what does it mean to close a mountain, and what does it mean to disregard the closing? The restricted area was not a bureaucratic formality but a judgment about risk, issued by those who know the volcano best. That a visitor crossed the line is a small tragedy with a large lesson: the sublime is not a service. It does not owe us safe access.

We would add a regional note. Sicily has long been framed from outside as a place of extremes — heat, poverty, drama, beauty. The volcano is the most literal expression of that framing. But the island's relationship with Etna is not one of fear or awe alone; it is one of coexistence, of harvests replanted after each eruption, of airports reopened after each ashfall. The world sees the eruption; we see the return. Both are true, and only the second explains how the island endures.

As the summer of 2026 continues, the mountain will keep its own calendar. The flights will resume, the trails will reopen, and the tourists will return. We hope the international press will remember, when it next writes of Etna, that the volcano is not a backdrop for a holiday but a neighbour — and that neighbours, even fiery ones, deserve a certain respect.