Volcanoes

Volcanoes I want to visit

When my mind etches it way through thinking about the world, a few subjects appear as massive, untamed and alive as geology. Rocks, tectonic plates, the awakening of the earth through earthquakes and volcanoes—all of it excites me. With it, beneath that excitement, I deliver a lot of fear. Some fears are practical: traveling, the strain of different climates and the unpredictability of new places. Others are philosophical, like the way creationism intertwines and collides into my interests with geology and astronomy. Together, these fears stack up, building an inner volcano in me—pressure, conflict, curiosity, and hesitation all layered like cooled magma or cooled lava.

I love learning about geology, but there is one issue with how it functions: some things can only be understood through direct experience. A textbook can tell you what a stratovolcano is, how basalt differs from granite, or how tectonic plates grind together but the real understanding arrives when the student stands at the rim of a crater, feel the heat, feel the smoothness of Rhyolite, and recognize that the ground beneath the student is alive and churning. That’s exciting even thrilling, but it is also overwhelming.

My struggle I contain isn’t with geology itself; it is with the human act of traveling there. I don’t like traveling since I got older. My trip to California ended in disaster—I came back drained, shaken and wondering why I had forced myself into that journey. My time in New York was fine, and Pennsylvania was fine too, but California burned into me the dangers of stretching myself too thing. Travel, at its core, can be vulnerable. Airports, hotels, time zones Associates I don’t know—increases stress. Now, even when I think about trips I would enjoy, like Chicago, Seattle, or even returning to California; my first instinct isn’t excitement. It’s fear.

And that fear strengthens a odd contradiction a strange conundrum. Because theplaces I dream of seeing most are not cities at all. They are volcanoes.

Five volcanoes haunt my imagination.

Mount Etna in Sicily, one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, feels like an eternal torch passed through history. Ancient civilizations looked at its eruptions with awe and terror. Even now, it spits fire into the sky.

Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica is smaller, younger, and surrounded by rainforest. Its cone shape looks almost too perfect, as if drawn by a child. It’s dormant now but not dead, a reminder that the ground never forgets its power.

Mount Fuji in Japan has always stood out to me as both a geological and cultural landmark. Symmetry, beauty, danger, spirituality—it combines them all. Fuji is not just a volcano but a symbol.

Kilauea in Hawaii may be the most alive of them all, still creating new land as lava flows into the ocean. To see an island being born before your eyes—how could any geology student resist that?

And Cotopaxi in Ecuador rises as one of the highest active volcanoes on the planet, its snowy slopes masking the fire within. To me, Cotopaxi symbolizes duality: ice and fire, life and death, stillness and eruption.

I want to stand near each of these, not just to say I went, but to feel what words and pictures can’t describe. Yet at the same time, the thought terrifies me.

Fear of Travel, Fear of Heat and Cold

Part of my fear is physical. Living in Maryland. I’ve pushed myself through extremes of weather for years—icy winters, and sweltering summers. At first, it felt like endurance training. Now It feels like exhaustion. My tolerance has worn down. I notice the cold more. The amount of time I flinch at the heat stacks up. Additionally, the volcanoes I want to see exist in climates that demand adaptation: the tropical dampness of Costa Rica, the thing air of Ecuador, the searing Hawaiian sun. Will my body betray me if I try? That fear hangs over my plans.

The Creationism Conflict

Next there is another issue: creationism. One of my closest friends are David L. Park. He is a head pastor. We don’t talk about astronomy or geology or creationism, even though those are my passions besides game development and writing. I respect him, and I don’t want our friendship to be defined by debate. But inside me, there is tension. Creationism and geology don’t stir well. It’s like Christianity is water and geology is oil. Christianity holds water up but doesn’t mix with it. Without a Deity, we wouldn’t exist. Yet Geology. Geology is built on deep time, on millions of years of pressure, erosion, eruptions and extinctions. Creationism shortens that timescale and explains the same features differently. Sometimes, I feel like I live between two worlds, trying to honor both friendship and truth.

The illustration my Web Developer came up with below is modern Christian point of view about Jesus praying on a high mountain. This previous illustration was taken from John 1:1 but it was replaced with the photograph below. I am pretty unsure of where the Garden of Eden fits into the picture.

This makes my fascination with volcanoes even heavier. When I image standing on Mount Etna or Kilauea, I don’t just see rocks and lava. I see questions about time, faith and science. I see the clashing of ideas between belief systems and the awe on the Earth.

Why I Still Dream of Volcanoes

With all the fear—fear of travel, of climate, of philosophical conflict—why do I engage with dreams of volcanoes as a black skinned student. Maybe because they embody the same contradiction I feel. A volcano is destructive but also creative. It kills but also fertilizes. It terrifies but also inspires. IT is dangerous to approach, yet to never see one is to deny a core slice of Earth itself.

I have no idea if I will ever visit Mount Etna, Arenal, Fuji, Kilauea, or Cotopaxi. My fear of travel might hold me back. My body might fail me in extreme temperatures. My friendships and beliefs might keep me quiet about what I really see there. Even with all of this on my shoulders, I still want to visit.

Because geology, in its chamber, is not just about rocks. At its core, it’s about facing what feels larger than yourself. And maybe by facing volcanoes of the world. I will also confront the volcano inside myself.