Living atop a volcano has its advantages; I highly recommend living in a caldera. Ideally of an extinct volcano.

For reference, see the picture below.

Schematic of an idealized active volcano. They’re never this neat.

Loooongggg ago, Colorado was dotted with active volcanos. Now there’s only one, down south, with a bunch of extinct volcanos everywhere else, one of which is where Swan’s Peak is situated. In the graphic, you see some bumps on the top of the volcano. We live on one of those bumps, though it’s 20 acres of bump.

I’m not sure about all calderas, but ours has its own weather system. We can see the ridge of the caldera all around us (it’s very big). The town of Guffey is on the outside slope of the caldera. It can snow there and not here. It will snow all around us and not necessarily here.

Today, a low hanging cloud (fog to less snobby people) was piled up at the ridge. It gives us the feeling of living in a snow globe, because it’s all along the outside of the volcano bones, but hasn’t ventured inside.

This is both good and bad. The weather apps use the overall area of Guffey (our town is four paved streets, but we have four zip codes. Guffey is huge, though the residence density averages one home per square mile), so it’s not very accurate for us volcanoers.

The other nice thing is all those bumps. We live atop one, with no name until I dubbed it Swan’s Peak. Several people have their own bumps, and some of those bumps are perilous. The back side of Pike’s Trail (our… um… unDevelopment) is populated by wealthy people who must be able to afford helicopters, because I’ve been back there and my truck won’t make it through to some of these homes. Still, many of us have our own little mountains, which is kind of cool.

And, I admit, the following benefit is a strange one. The idea of an “extinct” volcano is a misnomer. It won’t blow on its own. We’re safe from lava plumes…BUT… the volcano is connected to all the other volcanoes way down deep.

You’ve heard of the Yellowstone Super Volcano, surely? Geologists like to scare people about it. I even predicted it in my Me and the Maniac series, where the center of the continent falls away. This is the possible event where the lynchpin of all volcanoes blows its stack, melting all of Yellowstone and kick-starting all the extinct volcanoes in its chain.

Like my volcano.

Within a day of Yellowstone throwing a temper tantrum, my beautiful log home (and not so beautiful second home, and outright ugly cabin), will drop into the magma flow no longer deeply beneath us, and then shoot out of it in a blazing bomb, to be charred remains all over greater Guffey, which would soon follow into oblivion.

But it will be quick.

Funny thing, I watched Skyfire last night, a Chinese/American film (meaning the lone white guy spoke English, and everyone else was dubbed). The dumb white guy built an amusement park in the shadow of a volcano that wasn’t suppose to blow for 130 years, but did the next day. Of course. Not a great film or even a very good one. Needed character development, and some visitors we cared about so when they were smoked we’d feel bad. But have lived near Mt. St. Helens, I knew that they would have all been dead from lethal gas immissions–that would rival those inspired by Taco Bell–before the lava and bombs would get them. But that would have been a short movie.

Still, I’m confident I won’t die in a caldera drop, but something much more and far less dramatic in about 25 years or so.

But a guy can dream…