August 23, 2021 Issue

Heidi Julavits’s “The Fire Geyser,” in this weeks issue, has it all: fascinating subject (volcano eruption); exotic setting (Iceland’s Reykjanes Penninsula); personal experience (“I touched the hardened lava. It was the temperature of someone’s lap after a dog or a child has been sitting in it”); vivid description (“The center of the field resembled carbonized oatmeal. The lava near the path reached out with giant panther paws that seemed to demand petting”); arresting details (“There was now a strong and familiar odor. For a New Yorker, the association was immediate: 9/11. The air smelled like cataclysm”). 

It’s an account of Julavits’s trip to the Fagradalsfjall eruption in May of this year. It puts us squarely there at the top of Goggle Hill, looking down at the moving, molten lava fields:

Just beneath me, a bright-orange puddle, streaked with blue, bubbled up in the middle of what had seemed to be an inactive lava field. The puddle steadily grew as the surrounding surface melted away. Then a second puddle opened beside it, widening with the speed of film dissolving in a projector. As the puddles expanded, the heat surged, pushing me back, along with other spectators who’d come to the edge. Gas emanating from the puddles made my lungs constrict, causing light-headedness.

The piece brims with extraordinary description:

Seven or so minutes later, a man announced, in English, “Here it comes!” A notch in the crater’s side brightened as lava surged. Then a fire geyser shot above the crater’s lip, red-orange and slopping. It hung in the air, having apparently negotiated a deal with gravity during its time in the earth’s mantle. The lava gushed over the notch and fed the molten river. Bits of hardened crust floated along the top, resembling shards of black ice. A giant red-orange boulder flew about forty feet into the air, then landed and rolled halfway down the slope. Within seconds, it had seized in place, turning the color of ash.

The crater released an oceanic roar that filled my whole body. Even at a distance, I could feel the intense heat of the fire geyser on my face. If I closed my eyes, I was at the beach on a hot day, and had just emerged from the freezing water and was about to take a nap in the sun.

The lava here had an uneven, ominously scaly appearance, like glitchy dragon skin, and loomed ten feet overhead. It radiated an even heat, as though thrown from a cast-iron stove. This lava was palpably on the move, and it tinkled loudly as its glassy crust shattered. Molten rock, beneath a coating of solidified shards, rolled over itself at the pace of glue, churning the lava field forward and continuing to fill up a valley that, for the moment, still contained it.

“The Fire Geyser” is one of this year’s best pieces. I enjoyed it immensely.