We are standing on the concrete walkways through the geothermal vents at Te Puia, in Rotorua, New Zealand.
The geyser is erupting (or “playing,” as the locals say), sending two white, billowing shafts of steam into the chilly morning air. The wind blowing back toward us is thick and warm and smells of sulphur. Beneath our feet, geothermal heat radiates upward through the poured concrete. The ground throbs with energy, and there’s a sense that, not far below us, something large and angry would like to escape.
A little bridge leads over stream, where the chrome and blue water is punctuated with clumps of stone and outcroppings of green fern. The water looks cool and inviting. But looks are deceiving, because that stream is fed by hot springs, and the water is just shy of the boiling point. Two years ago, we’re told, a vacationing couple paid too little attention to their young son, who climbed over the barriers to take a dip. He was burned so severely, he died two days later.
We pass through a neighborhood of tiny houses. Here, lazy tongues of steam rise up from vents in the front yards. It is not unusual for residents to wake to a roaring noise, only to discover a new steam vent has erupted under their house. In some yards, these have been capped, and orange pipes ferry the superheated water away for the city’s use.
In the park in the center of the city, picket fences stand between public walkways and pits of thick, bubbling mud. An eruption here a few years back slathered the entire area in scalding grey goo and sent rocks flying into buildings blocks away.
We are used to life in the American South, where, occasionally, on stormy days, Death dips down from the low, black skies, carving a ruinous path through homes and businesses. We take this at face value; we understand the risks. What must it be, though, to live in a town where the solid ground is like a crust on a bubbling cobbler … and where, at any minute, the filling could spew upward, staining everyone and everything with irreversible loss?
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