Nine Islands, Three Plates

Polly came in low over a coastline of black volcanic rock, where green fields ran right up to the cliff edge and mist slid slowly across rounded hills further inland. This was São Miguel, the largest of the nine islands that make up the Azores, sitting alone in the middle of the North Atlantic. Salt air mixed with the smell of wet earth and cut grass, and somewhere below a rooster called out from a farm she could not yet see.

Polly je nisko doletjela nad obalu od crne vulkanske stijene, gdje su zelena polja sezala sve do ruba litice, a magla je polako klizila preko zaobljenih brežuljaka u unutrašnjosti. Bio je to São Miguel, najveći od devet otoka koji čine Azore, sam nasred sjevernog Atlantika. Slani zrak miješao se s mirisom vlažne zemlje i pokošene trave, a negdje ispod nje pijetao se oglasio s imanja koje još nije mogla vidjeti.

The whole island exists because of a seam far below the ocean floor, a place where three of the great plates that carry the continents grind slowly against each other. North America pulls one way, Europe another, and Africa presses in from the south, and where the three edges meet, heat and pressure find their way up through cracks in the crust. Every island in this chain was built the same way, one eruption at a time, out of nothing but fire and cooling rock.

Cijeli otok postoji zbog pukotine duboko ispod oceanskog dna, mjesta na kojem se tri velike ploče koje nose kontinente polako melju jedna o drugu. Sjeverna Amerika vuče na jednu stranu, Europa na drugu, a Afrika pritišće s juga, i ondje gdje se ta tri ruba susreću toplina i tlak pronalaze put prema gore kroz pukotine u kori. Svaki otok u ovom lancu nastao je na isti način, jednu po jednu erupciju, ni iz čega osim vatre i stijene koja se hladi.

Almost every field on São Miguel is edged by a hedge of hydrangeas, blue and violet and sometimes a soft pink, planted so thickly they look painted onto the landscape. Farmers brought the plants from Asia in the nineteenth century simply to mark the borders between pastures, never expecting them to become the island's signature. The volcanic soil, rich in minerals, turns their petals a deeper blue than the same flower grows almost anywhere else in the world.

Gotovo svako polje na otoku São Miguel obrubljeno je živicom od hortenzija, plavih i ljubičastih, ponekad i blago ružičastih, posađenih tako gusto da izgledaju kao naslikane na krajoliku. Poljoprivrednici su te biljke donijeli iz Azije u devetnaestom stoljeću samo da bi označili granice između pašnjaka, ne sluteći da će postati zaštitni znak otoka. Vulkansko tlo, bogato mineralima, njihove latice boji dubljom plavom nego što isti cvijet poprima gotovo bilo gdje drugdje na svijetu.

Further inland, the green hills rose and folded around wide, quiet basins that Polly could not see into from the coast. Steam rose faintly from somewhere among them, thin white threads against the grey sky, and she turned her flight toward the high ground to see what was making it.

Dublje u unutrašnjosti zeleni brežuljci uzdizali su se i sklapali oko širokih, tihih kotlina u koje Polly s obale nije mogla zaviriti. Odnekud među njima slabašno se dizala para, tanke bijele niti na sivom nebu, pa je skrenula prema visoravni da vidi što je stvara.