![]() The explorers in Jules Verne’s 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth end their adventure on Stromboli after their raft is improbably blown out of one of its fiery vents. It has served as a geological muse for centuries. It’s a prototypical volcano, and still a very active one. But most captivating was Stromboli, a truncated cone 39 miles away. I could see Lipari, too, long in the water like an alligator, and Panarea, which Anastasi would tell me later resembles a floating pregnant woman. Salina, the twin-peaked island where I’d be heading the next day, was closest at 15 miles away. So I sat on the covered terrace and got to know them. The view of the Tyrrhenian Sea from Salina, with Filicudi and Alicudi on the horizon. “Enjoy the view,” he said, sweeping his arm out toward the cliff and leaving me to study the islands in the distance. Despite the weather, he planned to drive down the mountain for his daily swim at one of the narrow, rocky beaches. ![]() Anastasi gave me the key to my room and the run of the place. When I arrived that afternoon, to thunder and lashing rain, I felt like I could have been the only one on the island. ![]() Filicudi, which has an area of less than four square miles, is home to around 200 people. “We’re not here to know our neighbors.” Of course, there aren’t many neighbors to know. He is 55, with serious eyes and a clean-shaven head. ![]() “People here love silence,” Anastasi told me. Several of the other Aeolians were visible on the horizon, and as Anastasi uncorked our second bottle, I watched pink popcorn-shaped clouds puff up among them, like a luminous island chain of their own. Filicudi is the second-farthest west of the Aeolian Islands, a volcanic archipelago that stretches for 50 miles north of Sicily. The water of the Tyrrhenian Sea, a few hundred feet below us, looked like gray-green glass. The two of us had been sitting in silence on the spacious terrace of Hotel La Canna, Anastasi’s 14-room refuge on the island of Filicudi. “Should I bring another bottle of wine?” asked Enzo Anastasi. ![]()
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