The Volcano Lover

     Recently, I walked to the top of a volcanic cinder cone in the Cascade Mountain range, in Oregon.  I have been in love with volcanoes for decades now, since I first heard of the ruins of Pompeii in the fourth grade, and  images of cataclysmic geology flowed  like molten lava within my ten year-old imagination. 

     I read the novel, The Volcano Lover, by Susan Sontag, simply because of its title.  It wasn’t  as much about volcanoes as it was about submerged passion and possession, but I enjoyed reading it.

     It was weird, walking on the top of a volcano, though it’s been more than a millenium since its last eruption. Volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest don’t conjure tropical images of the goddess Pele hurling showers of orange and red molten stone at the lovers who displeased her. Pacific Northwest volcanoes are more subtle. They simmer quietly for eons, occasionally belching benign plumes of white steam, seen for miles.

     I didn’t live in Oregon when Mount St. Helen erupted in May of 1980. But I have seen large spirals of steam billow up to the sky from it,  like no cloud I’d ever seen before.  It was a few years ago. I had just gotten off work, and was going to my car on the top of the hospital’s parking structure, when I saw it. A coworker of mine, who I occasionally ate lunch with (we liked the same bench in the hospital’s garden during good weather) was the only other person there to see it. We sat on the hood of his car, watching the phenomenon, and congratulating ourselves for having the best seats in Portland for this spontaneous performance. A year or two later, I can’t remember, this same coworker, who loved nature, his family, and his patients, was shot in the head by an intruder in his home, who stole the very car my now deceased friend and I had sat on that day, watching the volcano, and wondering what would happen next. 

     You never know what’s brewing underneath.

     I thought about all of this while walking the cinder cone. Life is unpredictable. One day you’re healthy, the next, you or someone you love is in an accident, or diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Or you get a phone call from a stranger, telling you  “I’m very sorry to inform you ma’am, that your loved one was found dead…”

     With this in mind, I refrain from judging my outpatients who irritably or sheepishly ask me to let them go out for a smoke, between their infusions of chemotherapy. A diagnosis of cancer motivates some patients to quit, but others find it so stressful, they don’t have it in them. Some of them berate themselves with guilt, because of it.  I do my duty, and encourage them to quit, but I know first hand that a healthy lifestyle doesn’t guarantee a cancer free life, and out of compassion, I share this knowledge with them. 

     I think about safety, and how to avoid danger, and this quote, from the sci-fi movie Demolition Man bubbles up from memory:

 “I have seen the future. Do you know what it is? It’s a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing, ‘I’m an Oscar Meyer Weiner’.”

     I’m learning that the rules we make for ourselves only create an illusion of control. We have choices, but we don’t have control. Or rather, we have control until it’s taken away from us, through illness, accident, or a violent crime. We walk, not realizing the volcanic turmoil underneath the smooth surfaces of our lives, until an eruption occurs.

     You never know what’s brewing underneath.