Steam Rising from a Volcanic Fumarole

A fumarole is a vent where steam and volcanic gas leak out of the ground. The yellow crust around this one is sulfur, left behind as the hot gas cools at the surface. Up close, the same gas smells strongly of rotten eggs. Here the steam drifts off a small mound in a wide field of broken black lava, with brown hills under a flat gray sky. Nothing is erupting in the volcanic fumarole jigsaw puzzle, yet the ground under all that rock is very much alive.