Published: February 14, 2025

By Mark Seth Lender

Fractured, hexagonal basalt on the ceiling of a lava tube in Iceland. (Photo: © Mark Seth Lender)

Living on Earth's Explorer-in-Residence, Mark Seth Lender, provides insight into the writing of his essay "The Silence".

Beyond the word is the image. In the part of this story that takes place in Vermont, that image lives in the mind’s eye, the mind’s ear, and the telling of the story if done right puts you there despite the distance the time. Writing of an experience, this one only weeks prior from inside a lava tube in Iceland (in the same system, and probably much too close to an active volcano) I would like to believe that here too, words alone is enough. Perhaps you can feel the claustrophobia, the implications of being in a place human beings clearly do not belong. But in this instance there are photographs and even if the mind’s eye does not really need the help, photography undeniably adds a dimension. And not of the usual cast. There is low light photography and then there is “no light” photography, this being the latter. Artifacts of grain and color are the tradeoff, otherwise, no image at all. Much is revealed.

As to the Silence that some call Nothingness...

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