I never imagined I would walk on the bottom of a lake, least of all in the place I have called home all my life. Pergusa, the biggest natural lake in Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, dried up at the end of June. And it is unlikely that the water and the wildlife that inhabited it will return anytime soon.
The closer I get to the center of the lake, the more I imagine the point where the water would have reached my ankles, then my knees, then my chest, until it rose above my head. When the lake was healthy, the average depth of the water reached to about 13 feet. Not a deep basin, certainly. But the uniqueness of Pergusa lay in other things. Historical sources mention that on its shores, the mythical abduction of Persephone, goddess of the underworld, took place — perhaps one of the most ancient myths passed down to us by Greek culture.
Located in the center of the island, a couple of miles from the provincial capital, Enna, and in a region dotted with high solitary peaks and wide valleys golden with wheat — once a major supply for imperial ancient Rome — Lake Pergusa, seen from above, appeared as a fresh, green oasis in a scorched and thirsty landscape. There are no rivers feeding the basin. The lake is endorheic, meaning it has no inflows. Its waters depend on rainfall. And it hasn’t rained in Sicily for over a year.
Like other Mediterranean regions, the island is experiencing the effects of an unprecedented drought. Temperatures also remain consistently very high. July 2023, when the average was 81 degrees Fahrenheit, was recorded by the Sicilian Meteorological Service as the hottest month in the past 20 years. In recent months, the regional government has been forced to take drastic measures, such as rationing drinking water. The measures have affected more than 1 million citizens. The artificial reservoirs are at their limit. Agricultural companies will see their harvests drastically decrease. Farmers water their animals in muddy pools. The Sicilian rivers, with ancient names that evoke the passage of the peoples who inhabited the island — rivers like the Simeto, the Alcantara, the Irminio — almost no longer flow to the sea.
According to mythology, Hades, lord of the underworld, decided one day to take a tour among the hills around Mount Etna to check on the state of the caves. Aphrodite, playing with Eros on Mount Erice, happened to see Hades riding his chariot through the island’s countryside. She recalled that, among all the gods, he was the only one who had never fallen in love. She asked Eros to shoot an arrow into his heart to force him to fall in love with a woman and make her his queen in the realm of the dead. Hades, arriving near Lake Pergusa and seeing the beautiful Persephone playing with her companions, thus fell in love with her and abducted her, taking her away on his chariot.
After searching for her daughter Persephone in vain, Demeter, the goddess of fertility, became so enraged that she caused the earth to cease producing crops, leading to drought and famine. It required Zeus’ intervention to resolve the situation. He proposed a pact: For six months of the year, Persephone would live on earth with her mother, while for the remaining time, she would reside with her husband. Demeter agreed but on one condition: Whenever her gaze was far from her daughter’s and sadness filled her heart, the earth would suffer the same sorrow. Likewise, with Persephone’s return, joy would fill her mother once more, and the earth itself would revive. With fertility restored, flowers would bloom, animals would awaken, and trees would bear fruit. Thus, spring was born, and so the seasons came to be.
Today, Persephone is no longer here.
While walking on the bottom of the lake, I am struck with extreme violence by the realization of how my life and that of my community has irreversibly changed. The disappearance of the lake is already a traumatic event: Mourning has taken root. A constant feature of my present has turned into a memory over the course of one summer. Even today, I find it difficult to speak of the lake in the present or the past. The lake is, the lake was? How does one process the collective trauma?
Yet the memories I have of my lake are not the same as those of my parents. And my parents’ memories differ from those of my grandparents. My grandmother, for instance, used to tell me about a time when it was possible to swim in the lake. She recounted how many people were afraid to swim in those waters because of the abundant algae that would tangle around swimmers’ legs, sometimes drowning them. It was an exaggerated fear, perhaps stemming from the fact that swimming was uncommon. I have never swum in the lake’s waters, and the thought has always seemed unimaginable to me. This is because I have always experienced the lake as a place to observe from afar, especially since the shore is choked by a controversial racetrack.
In 1958, the track was built, encircling the lake. The 3 miles of asphalt severed the continuity between the lake and the surrounding hills. The inauguration took place in August of the same year with the eighth edition of the Pergusa Grand Prix, where Giulio Cabianca, a prominent Formula One driver of that era, won behind the wheel of an Osca in front of over 50,000 spectators. It was a time of great excitement and fun for the lake community. The track even hosted an edition of the Mediterranean Grand Prix, featuring Formula One cars — not a championship race but one of great prestige. There are famous anecdotes, still recounted by the elderly, of drivers who, navigating the fast chicanes, skidded and ended up in the lake’s waters. They were then promptly rescued by stewards, to the delight and amusement of the spectators.
The relationship between the people and the lake has always been contentious. It surprises me to sense the dismay of my community at the lake’s disappearance, considering that for over a century, efforts were made to ensure that the lake’s unruly nature didn’t interfere with people’s needs and interests. In 1960, heavy rains swelled the lake’s waters, flooding the racetrack — a problem for the races and for those who had invested significant money. It was deemed necessary to build embankments so that the natural expansion of the lake could be curbed with an artificial barrier. The lake, which for millennia expanded and contracted like a heart in the center of Sicily, reached its limit, restrained by the whims of human communities. Over the years, however, races became increasingly rare, until the structure was almost abandoned in 2004, only occasionally hosting events. Over time it has become a sort of park where, instead of racing cars, people jog or ride bicycles.
Between the lake’s shores and the racetrack, I picked my first blackberries, which grew wild among the many brambles tangled in the protective nets. I gathered sprigs of wild mint that thrived along the lakeside. I witnessed for the first time hundreds of starlings creating spectacular formations right above the lake’s surface, before crashing down into the reeds with a roar. One night, beside the track and surrounded by the croaking of frogs, I confessed my love to my first girlfriend. Almost 15 years later, on a path lined with reeds, I looked with longing eyes at another love, a woman from whom I would later separate. On that same path, I learned to ride a bicycle. The lake was the first thing I saw when I opened my tear-filled eyes, aching after my first fall and with my knees scraped for the first time.
Walking toward the center of the lake, then, gives me a strange feeling: It’s like violating an intimacy, yet a sense of excitement washes over me. I’ve never been this close to the lake. I’ve never been so distant as well. As I walk, the ground feels like the skin of an elephant, rough and grayish, with scattered patches of salt as well as the dried tracks of animals — perhaps foxes — and those of other curious humans who came before me. I find some shell casings, and I’m reminded of my grandfather’s stories about his youth, when at the start of the hunting season, they would navigate the lake in small boats, hunting local birds. A little further on, I notice a shapeless mass: It’s the carcass of a flamingo. It looks like it could be a dinosaur fossil.
Families of flamingos would rest on the low shores of the lake when the waters became more brackish. I remember the wonder I felt as a child seeing those strange and exotic creatures. News of the flamingos’ arrival would quickly spread through my community, and groups of people would gather at the lake’s shores to admire them. Pergusa is a crucial stopover for migratory water bird species traveling between Africa and Europe and vice versa: gray herons, glossy ibises, night herons, coots and teal ducks. It’s one of the few resting areas in Sicily, along with the Biviere di Gela and the small Lake Soprano which, in recent months, also dwindled to a pond. A sort of gathering place for species, an oasis for ancient pilgrimages.
As I pass by the flamingo’s carcass, I realize now that the background sounds that used to accompany my walks — the quacking of a duck, the soft splash of a water bird diving — are no longer there. The silence is unnatural, as if I were inside a vast anechoic chamber. As I look around, I notice that one presence has always remained constant: the eucalyptus trees, which tell another story of Pergusa.
Eucalyptus trees are not Mediterranean but Australian. Among their characteristics, aside from their unique balsamic fragrance that spreads across the entire Pergusa basin, is their ability to extract natural water. In the 1920s, with the rise of the fascist regime in Italy, the territory around Lake Pergusa underwent its first major transformations. Pergusa was an unhealthy place, where malaria spread easily among the local population. The fascist regime needed to reclaim as much land as possible to fully activate the agricultural engine. As Benito Mussolini declared on July 30, 1925: “The grain battle, gentlemen, means freeing the Italian people from the bondage of foreign bread. The swamp battle means freeing the health of millions of Italians from the lethal threats of malaria and misery.” Pergusa had to be reclaimed. And so it was. Dikes and drainage channels were built and hundreds of eucalyptus trees were planted, which over the years have spread throughout the surrounding area. The village of Pergusa, still inhabited today, was also founded, hosting the first workers and laborers of the newly revitalized local economy.
Since the lake’s disappearance, there have been two local public assemblies to discuss its future. Among the proposed interventions is the removal of the eucalyptus trees and their gradual replacement with other, more suitable species for the area that would re-create an ecosystem as close as possible to the ancestral one, featuring a landscape dotted with evergreen oaks and elms. But this is not an easy task. The eucalyptus trees host various animal species, including insects and birds, and the cost of such an operation would be significant. Additionally, where would we find the missing water? We can’t rely on future rains. It might be possible to channel water from nearby dams, but even those are in deep crisis. If the drought continues for two more months, we may no longer be able to use the dam water for civil purposes.
So here I am, at the center of the lake. A nauseating odor rises from a spot where mud is drying in the sun, the remnants of a futile dredging attempt made in the early 2000s, when the lake dried up once before. That event, though, was different from today: It was caused by unsustainable exploitation of its waters by nearby settlements. With a rainfall regime quite different from the current one and with the use of water from nearby dams, that situation was fortunately resolved. Today, however, such a result is unattainable.
I wonder what the memories of a child who is 5 years old will be. In their future, there will not have been a lake to make memories from. There will be no sunsets fading over its waters, no falling stars diving into its depths on the night of St. Lawrence, celebrated each Aug. 10 when a meteor shower can be seen in the sky. Instead, there will be a warning: Pergusa has become a symbol of the ongoing climate crisis, a crisis that future generations will pay dearly for. What has happened at Pergusa is a foretaste of what other fragile ecosystems will face in the future if action is not taken soon. Here, in the heart of Sicily, in the heart of the Mediterranean, we have witnessed the end of the seasons.
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