Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeWhat’s it like to move back to your home – if you still have one – when the landscape around it has turned to ashes? That’s what intrigued photographer Jonathan Browning when he visited the Spanish island of La Palma, off the Moroccan coast, more than two years after the Cumbre Vieja volcano spewed lava and ash for 85 days over the southern part of La Isla Bonita, destroying thousands of homes and buildings in the path of its fiery flows. Browning arrived in January last year to find houses that had been swallowed entirely left untouched; others that had been spared were looted, or access to them blocked.“The lava field, although solidified, is unstable; it’s forbidden to walk on it,” Browning says. “There may be lava tunnels which you could fall into, and the rock is sharp. There were acres and acres of banana plantations and pretty houses, but this huge area is now a completely unusable and worthless black land mass.”Browning cycled on a new road carved across the blackened landscape and says he could feel the “eerie” heat from deep below: “There’s very much a ‘Mordor’ feel to it.” The island features in a recent Norwegian drama series about the disaster on Netflix – and visitors can now take guided tours of the volcano and lava fields.To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.
