Pico, the Telluric Island by Victor Rui Dores
Translated into English by Katharine F. Baker and Bobby Chamberlain, Ph.D.
A volcanic island of black rock throughout which flows the delicious verdelho wine once exported to Czarist Russia, to the Vatican’s table and to the hospitality of the 19th century’s wealthiest royal houses. This wine has been honored in world literature, even celebrated by Tolstoy in his masterpiece War and Peace.
To this day one can still see the grooves left in the volcanic rock at the port of Formosinha by large “pipes” of wine bound for America, Europe and Brazil. Back then wine left from Pico bound for the whole world. The island’s viniculture area has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004.
Pico is synonymous with stone. There is square mile after square mile of rocks that were dug out of the ground in order to rid the land of so many boulders, and with them the “corrals” were built that are the puzzles of the island. It is said that if they were removed from the walls and laid on the ground end to end in a straight line, these stones would span the islands, the continents and oceans – one and a half times around the world.
Not far from Valverde sit the maroiços – epic mounds of stones picked up from the ground, then ingeniously piled into these strange pyramidal constructions that have now become the subject of several misguided studies. I recall here the lapidary statement of the late António Duarte, “Maroiços are the epic poetry made from stone by the men of Pico.”
This attests to the genetic heritage of Picoenses. They tend to be tall and stocky, fearless and vigorous. Because, with the strength of their arms, they dared to dominate Nature. Of all Azoreans, Picarotos were the ones who raised their hoes highest and sank them deepest, breaking the soil’s burnt crust in order to cultivate grapevines. And no one, in the face of harshness and adversity, worked the land and sea harder than Picarotos.
Rising from the sea in petrified beauty, majestic Mt. Pico grabs hold of our senses. We behold it, and it in return beholds us from its 7,713 foot elevation, the third tallest volcano in the Atlantic Ocean and highest point in all of Portugal. Countless primarily spewing eruptions have occurred on the slopes of the mountain, which has been a nature reserve since 1982. Thin white ribbons of steam visible on the Piquinho or Pico Pequeno [“little peak,” the volcanic plug at the summit] attest that the volcano has still not completely ceased its activity.
Regarded as one of Portugal’s seven natural wonders, this magical and colossal mountain is both our spectacular year-round show and our daily barometer. It never presents the same view twice, since the light that outlines it is ever in constant flux: first it is clear, then shrouded in fog; now it is violet, next it is the color of fire, after which it is covered in black, gray and shades of blue and pink – only to dawn clad in the most immaculately white snow. In summer it fades to purple, with a huge moon rising behind surrealistic clouds.
Pico’s Parque Natural da Ilha is the largest natural park in the Azores, comprising 22 protected areas. The Gruta das Torres [Grotto of Towers] in the concelho [county] of Madalena is Portugal’s largest lava tube. Everything on this island is filled with beauty and grandeur.
In 1924 Raul Brandão, writer and impressionist painter, wrote in his book As Ilhas Desconhecidas [The Unknown Islands], “Pico is the most beautiful, most extraordinary island in the Azores – with a beauty that belongs only to it, a wonderful color and strange power of attraction. It is more than an island – it is a statue rising to the sky and shaped by fire – it is another Adamastor, like the one at Cape of Good Hope.”
Pico was the land of whalers who with harpoons speared their bread, dreams and hopes. For more than 100 years whaling, that riskiest of ventures, was not only the expression of the very need for human adventure but above all an indispensable source of resources. As a whale watching sanctuary, Pico today has in the whale a symbol (and myth) of that epic maritime past. As a result, the Museu dos Baleeiros [Whaling Museum] in Lajes is today the Azores’ most-visited museum.
Designated in early times as São Dinis Island, and now having three concelhos – Lajes, São Roque and Madalena (founded in this order) – Pico, the archipelago’s second largest island in area, has livestock, agriculture, viniculture and fishing as the bases of its economy.
With the islands of Faial and São Jorge serving as a backdrop, there are some who say Pico is the island of the future. I went to the house of Mr. Ermelindo Ávila in Lajes to find out if this was so. The commander, from the perspective of his 97 years of age and his wisdom, left me with this advice: “Pico needs to be repopulated with youth.”
Island-mountain of wineries, vineyards, stills, dragon trees, willows and summer homes. Ancestral island, poetic, deep and wild, Pico is a telluric force!
