Complex Numbers

Montserrat

Got a long one for you today. It's from Truly*Adventure, a source I've never used before, and it's a few years old.

    Every Living Creature  

As the title is kinda vague, and the subtitle is kinda long, I'll sum it up as quick as I can: A volcano erupted, people fled, and other people saved the animals left behind.

What makes this interesting to me is that I've visited the volcano. While it was active.

The Soufriere Hills Volcano had been threatening the small Caribbean island of Montserrat for two years.

I mean, technically, the island of Montserrat is the Soufriere Hills volcano. It was dormant for so long they thought it was extinct. Turns out it wasn't.

The article is, as I said, long. So this is more to share it, and recount my own experience, than to make comments on it.

There exists a photo of me—rare, I know— standing next to the volcano exclusion zone sign on Montserrat. Really, I should have put at least one foot over the line to demonstrate just how rebellious I am.

But it's probably wrong for me to joke (though that's never stopped me before). What happened to Montserrat is a real tragedy. Thousands displaced. City destroyed. Fortunately, they're a Commonwealth country, so England took a bunch of them. But how do you go from living on a tropical island paradise to cold and windy Old Blighty?

Not that Montserrat isn't windy. There's a distinct difference between the windward and leeward sides of the island. One's mostly barren, with sporadic trees that grow diagonally because of the winds off the Atlantic. The other's a tropical rainforest. Or, well, was, before it turned to ash.

And a few holdouts remained on the island. To avoid the exclusion zone, they migrated to the inhospitable (barren and windy) northern lobe. I haven't been there for 20 years, but I recall makeshift dwellings and such. Hopefully, things have improved by now.

At the time, I considered myself lucky to get a tour of the island, at least those parts open to travel. Unless you live in a volcano zone, it's not every day you get to observe an active one, and even rarer that you can do so in relative safety. Standing on a windy hillside, I watched the mountain blow plumes of smoke while the ground vibrated beneath my feet. Clouds hovered around the summit, and, despite the wind, never cleared.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere, but it's too early in the morning for me to tease it out.