🌬️Messages from the Wind
When the wind blows, each gust that wraps around you feels like a message for you, a message from the sea. It is as if many small suggestions were trying to catch your attention, your mind’s attention. You could compare them to caresses, gentle nudges trying to show you the way!
Because that is what the warm wind of the Aeolians is, a stream of suggestions about where to point your bow. You don’t fight the wind, you go along with it, listen to it and take every advantage it can give you. A breath, a push to keep going further, and it will be the wind that sails you to the next island. Even if you already know it, coming back and finding everything you left last time is always a new thrill!
⛵Freedom and the Scent of Light
One of the greatest feelings of freedom you can have is sailing between Salina and Filicudi in the early afternoon. After a stop at Pollara for lunch and a swim in the bay from “Il Postino,” you weigh anchor with the bow pointing west-southwest, alongside the sun’s path. There, where the mistral breeze rules the channel, the sea and the wind let you sail toward the island that is by now the very definition of an island, Filicudi.
The smell of the wind, which you would think has no smell but does, stirs your sense of smell unmistakably and fills your body with that unique mix of iodine, salt and the scent of the sun. Because, like it or not, sunlight has its own scent if you know how to catch its essence. Its light is not the same in every corner of the world, and when the light changes, so does the essence.
📖In the Footsteps of Conrad
Who knows if Joseph Conrad ever thought of writing something about the Aeolian Islands. It would have been wonderful to read his words about this archipelago. His words were so descriptive that they brought to life everything he wrote about. He could give life and soul to an iron bollard or a wooden capstan, and so this article will keep trying to describe these islands by imitating his writing as far as possible, even though his skill remains unmatched.
🌋The Daughters of the Volcano
The Aeolian Islands. Lipari the largest, Salina the greenest, Panarea the night owl, Stromboli the mighty, Filicudi and Alicudi the wild and faraway ones, and last Vulcano, Jurassic, yet the closest to the real world since it lies just a few miles from Sicily.
There, to the south, like a teacher behind his desk, Etna rises in all its majesty, as if it were the great father of these seven islands, which were also born from the eruptions of other volcanoes. Fanciful as it may be, it is nice to think of them as his daughters, the daughters of the Volcano of Volcanoes, watched over from above.
🏠Living on the Island – Adapting to Nature
The Aeolian archipelago. Living in the Aeolians, and not just spending your vacations here, is not easy. You need a great ability to adapt and to make the most of nature and its resources, which are many but have to be found and put to work to improve your life.
Because if you can’t find the key to the advantages of living on these islands, you risk being left with only the inconveniences, and there are quite a few. On the other hand, those same inconveniences vanish if you value the natural side of the islands and all the wonderful feelings they can give you, even in winter, when there are no tourists and life moves at a truly slow pace, with no distractions. There are no movie theaters, theaters or clubs. On some islands the population drops to fewer than 40 or 50 people, and even on the larger islands, where more people live in winter, services are still scarce. Even going out and finding a table at one of the few pizzerias that stay open is not a given.
✨ The Winter Calm
Villas, houses and country cottages on the hills are closed up, and those who stay behind act as caretakers and handle the upkeep for those who are away. Everything stops, almost even time. Winter is long and gray, but it also brings fantastic clear sunsets that you don’t get in summer. Starry skies on nights when the tramontana blows, the sea shining with the moon’s reflections. For the moon, all seasons are the same. She is always there above the islands, whether or not there are tourists to look at her.
Seen from afar, the lights of the houses flicker, mixed with the stars in the roof of the sky. Horizons betrayed by the moonlight and the mountainous outlines of the islands draw lines and curves all around, three hundred and sixty degrees. The water murmurs on the rocks, because there is no storm, only a cool, still winter night, almost motionless, as if it had been drawn and written for the few who stay, the islanders, the people of the Aeolian Islands.
🌌An Indescribable Experience
Describing the Aeolians is almost impossible, even when you think you have found the right words. Reading them back, you realize something always slips away. These are islands of unique charm and unique nature. You can’t tell them, you have to live them for as long as possible on hot summer days, when night is slow to come, even though night in the Aeolians is not made for sleeping, or rather not for sleeping indoors.
In the Aeolians you sleep outdoors, out on the deck of the boat, on the beach, as close to the sea as you can, on the hills and why not, in the village lanes where peace reigns supreme. The Aeolian Islands have to be read at every moment of the day. Only then can you understand them and receive from them the best of what they offer unconditionally, gift after gift.
🖊️💙 A Story to Write Together
Filicudi Island. Who knows if Joseph Conrad would feel the same. Who knows if he ever passed by these islands. Surely not, or he could not have helped writing about them, turning them with his pen into something alive and unexpected. He would have told the Aeolians as they truly are and, above all, given them that soul only he knew how to give.
A vacation in the Aeolians is never just an adventure. It is also culture, exercise, good food and fun. Only those who have been here can understand these words, and if you haven’t been yet, my advice is not to wait any longer. Come and try to tell their story yourself… but only after you have gotten to know them!