Etnatao

Eco-friendly excursions on Mt. Etna

guided by a Geologist and Naturalistic Guide

Visit my website www.etnatao.com

and Etnatao Channel on YouTube

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Mount Etna is the highest active volcano in continental Europe, one of the world’s most active volcanoes and a magic and primordial place.    >>

It rises to a height of over 3300 m. (11.000 feet) above the sea level, its north-south diameter is of 50 km (30 miles), it has four big central craters at its top and more than 200 small craters scattered all around the volcanic area.    >>

In this part of Sicily the volcanism started about half million years ago and it evolved from a mostly submarine activity to the growth of many different sub-aerial volcanoes superimposed one on  another.    >>

The result of this long and complicated evolution is the majestic volcano that we see today, which continues to grow, to evolve and to modify restlessly the landscape.    >>

Visiting Mt. Etna we can often see side by side two different faces of nature: the moony landscape of recent lava flows and, in a surrealistic contrast, extended green areas where the vegetation, after several centuries of struggle, has re-conquered and colonized old lava fields. >>

The peculiarities of this unique environment stretch from volcanology to  tectonics, from geology to botany, from geophysics to ornithology, interlacing with countless myths and thousands of years of recorded human history.    >>

I am a geologist and a naturalistic guide and the excursions I propose tend to emphasize all the facets of Mt. Etna in order to discover “the essence” and the energy of this charming volcano. >>

In my vision walking is an integral part of the experience of approaching nature and Mt. Etna is a paradise for trekking because of the presence of many trails, from pleasant easy walks to extended hikes.    >>

One of the most interesting areas, the one where I often lead my groups, is around the altitude where the wood passes to the “Astragaletum” (high altitude vegetation area) and then to the volcanic desert.    >>

During an average excursion you will be able to see craters and lava fields of different ages, volcanic bombs, fractures, lava caves, volcano-tectonic valleys (calderas), endemic plants and trees (species that grow exclusively in this area), and some of the animals, birds and insects that have adapted to survive in this rough habitat.    >>

This eco-friendly project is an alternative to the many other touristy excursions with a jeep, it is a true naturalistic excursion with zero impact on the environment, suited for people who feel that a well-balanced approach to nature can be a vehicle of personal growth and a way of harmony.

– Quotes –

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
Henry David Thoreau

 

 

Nature often holds up a mirror so we can see more clearly the ongoing processes of growth, renewal, and transformation in our lives.
Mary Ann Brussat

 

Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. Then sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers.
Peter Matthiessen

 

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir

 

When there is no place  that you have decided to call your own, then no matter where you go, you are always heading home.
Muso Soseki

 

The Wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.
Joseph Wood Krutch

 

As you walk, you simply walk. Don’t go ahead, don’t jump here and there. Mind always go ahead or lag behind. Remain with the moment.
Osho

 

You need special shoes for hiking – and a bit of a special soul as well.
Emme Woodhull Bäche

 

And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

 

When you are going to hike – pack a light heart.
Dan May

 

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
Edmund Hillary

 

It is in man’s heart that the life of nature’s spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

 

Do not go where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.   

Anais Nin

 

Think what a great world revolution will take place when there are millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country.
Jack Kerouac

 

Yin and Yang are not in competition or conflict to each other, but are complements of each other. Balance is not a state but a process. The Tao is a process, a dynamic condition of balance.
Ray Grigg

 

When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one’s physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do.  Then every man one meets is an individual.
Aleister Crowley

 

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.
Aldo Leopold

 

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
Carl Sagan

 

Wherever you are is the entry point.
Kabir

 

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connected.
Chief Seattle

 

For me and for thousands with similar inclinations, the most important passion of life is the overpowering desire to escape periodically from the clutches of a mechanistic civilization. To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefiled panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness.
Bob Marshall

 

Gradually, physicists began to realise that nature, at the atomic level, does not appear as a mechanical universe composed of fundamental building blocks, but rather as a network of relations, and that, ultimately, there are no parts at all in this interconnected web. Whatever we call a part is merely a pattern that has some stability and therefore captures our attention.
Fritjof Capra

 

The longest journey begins with a single step.
Lao Tzu

 

All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy—it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it.
Carlos Castaneda

 

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
Paramahansa Yogananda

 

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell

 

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
John Muir

 

If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.
Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
Joseph Campbell

 

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Walt Whitman

 

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. . . Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Carl Gustav Jung

 

A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein

 

The Tao is both singular and universal. It is open to all with the resolve and inclination to walk it. Those who do, however, take a variety of disciplines in approaching it, for the Tao extrapolates from the specific to the general.

Dave Lowry

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you ar out there.
Yasutani Roshi

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
Joseph Campbell

We are all born originals – why is it so many of us die copies?
Edward Young

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.  Everything is simply happy.  Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance.  Look at the flowers – for no reason.  It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.
Osho

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking.  Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.
Raymond Inmon

Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps,it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano

The “paradox” is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality “ought” to be.
Richard Feynman

Perceive that which cannot be seen with the eye.
Miyamoto Musashi

Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.
Konrad Lorenz

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Chuang-tzu

There are two kinds of climbers, those who climb because their heart sings when they’re in the mountains, and all the rest.
Alex Lowe

Changing the world begins with the very personal process of changing yourself, the only place you can begin is where you are, and the only time you can begin is always now.
Gary Zukav

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
G. K. Chesterton

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo

The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.
Gregory Bateson

What a wonderful life I’ve had!  I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
Colette

The more a human being feels himself a self, tries to intensify this self and reach a never-attainable perfection, the more drastically he steps out of the center of being.
Eugene Herrigel

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.
Joseph Conrad

I wonder how long this word will last, governed exclusively by the merciless, inhuman and immoral criteria of global economy.
Seeing the shadow of distant islands, I imagined one still inhabited by a tribe of poets set aside for when, after the middle age of materialism, humanity will have to start to put other values into his existence.
Tiziano Terzani

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Joseph Campbell

Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
William Blake

 

Out beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Rumi

 

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
Robert Louis Stevenson

 

My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms will it return to my body when they scatter?
Kotomichi

 

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.  Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness.  I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.
Soren Kierkegaard

 

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
Native American Proverb

 

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind.  Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.
Gary Snyder

 

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
Lao Tzu

 

The man with the backpack is never lost. No matter whither he may stray, his food and shelter are right with him, and home is wherever he may choose to stop.”
Horace Kephart

 

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
Alan Watts

 

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
Ursula K. LeGui

 

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
John Lennon

 

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau

 

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

 

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
Jack Kerouac

 

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix

 

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity…
John Muir

 

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran

 

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?
Charles Schulz

 

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
H.L.Mencken

 

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
George Bernard Shaw

 

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Mevlana Jelalu’ddin Rumi

 

Every situation, every moment is of infinite worth for it is representative of a whole eternity.
John Wolfgang Goethe

 

Be yourself; everybody else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde

 

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.
Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

 

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen that you bring up there.
Robert M. Pirsing

 

When your mind is empty of prejudices you can see the Tao. When your hearth is empty of desires you can follow the Tao.
Master Lu

 

I don’t climb mountains. Mountains climb me. The mountain is myself. I climb on myself.
Nanao Sasaki

 

And if there is not any such thing as long time, nor the rest of our lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, then now is thing to praise and I am very happy with it.
Ernest Hemingway

 

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
An eternity in an hour.
William Blake

 

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Blaise Pascal

 

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
Rabindranath Tagore

 

Climb up on some hill at sunrise. Everybody needs perspective once in a while, and you’ll find it there.
Robb Sagendorph

 

Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.
Walt Whitman

 

Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become. Paramahansa Yogananda

 

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature’s way.
Aristotle

 

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus

 

Walks.  The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.
Jules Renard

 

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers.
When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers.
But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest.
For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains,
and rivers once again as rivers.
Ching-yuan

 

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
Steven Wright

 

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
Fred Allen

 

It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
Tom Robbins

 

Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.
Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.   

George Berkeley

 

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
Aldo Leopold

 

The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery.
Fred Alan Wolf

 

It is not down in any map; true places never are.
Herman Melville

 

Remember when life’s path is steep, keep your mind even.
Horace

 

Our true home is in the present moment.  To live in the present moment is a miracle.  The miracle is not to walk on water.  The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment…
Thich Nhat Hanh

 

A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the western mechanistic paradigm.
Stanislav Grof

 

Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Oscar Wilde

 

There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country.  A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo.  Even a bicycle goes too fast.
Paul Scott Mowrer

 

To get or not to get what we desire can be equally disappointing.
Epictetus

 

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
William Blake

 

Create each day anew by clothing yourself with heaven and earth, bathing yourself with wisdom and love, and placing yourself in the heart of Mother Nature.
Morihei Ueshiba

 

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin

 

Each time dawn appears,the mystery is there in its eternity.
Arthur Rimbaud

 

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.
James Openheim

 

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
John Fowles

 

No man can cross the same river twice because neither the man nor the river are the same.
Heraclitus

If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
Vincent Van Gogh

Yes, I am going into the woods; I am going into the unity of all things.
Hermann Hesse

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.
David Attenborough

Visit my website www.etnatao.com

and Etnatao Channel on YouTube

Tat Tvam Asi

तत् त्वम् असि

– All rights reserved –

 

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