Project:Therapy: Madame Pele, I presume --- Hawaii, the Final Act

It's interesting to remember that the news of Hawaii came to me on my anniversary as a widow. It was while spending the evening with the Williams Clan at Chez Zee that Kim first mentioned that she had accepted this job and the invitation extended to spend some time down there over the summer. It was never a question of if I could make it happen but when. I have a great extended family, and I am thankful for them.

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From the moment I bought my plane ticket, I was interested primarily in planning a side trip to the Big Island to play volcanologist. There are only a handful of places in the world that one can witness the churnings of an active volcano, and I simply had to do see it for myself. For my last few days in tropical paradise, we planned a side trip to the island of Hawaii for some real adventure!

We flew into Hilo, Hawaii my last Friday at 7:30pm. One of the ladies at the airport had recommended a diner called Ken's for supper. O M G.... Ken's was amazing!!! It was one of those places that had 40,000 items on the menu, a little bit of everything and a whole lot of breakfast, and you knew just by looking at the place that every one of those items would come out amazing. I had a really boring but super delicious bacon, eggs, and pancake dinner with some POG (passion fruit-orange-guava juice). Yum yum! Perfect dinner for exploration. After eating we checked into our hotel and headed out for some star gazing and volcano hunting!

Yes, star gazing. Hawaii is home to the Mauna Kea Observatory - a collection of several observatories and telescopes controlled by a number of countries atop the Mauna Kea (Ma-una Key-a) shield volcano. It hasn't erupted in 4000+ years, and, because of its altitude, there is virtually no man-made light up there. By the time we had unloaded the car with our bags, bundled up for the 40* temperatures you find at 9000 feet above sea level, and found our way down the poorly lit Hawaiian roads, it was 10:00 when we reached the visitors center. You're only allowed to drive up to the actual observatory a) during daylight and b) with a 4x4 vehicle. The kids had conked out the back, so it was just the adults taking in the beauty. We were the only folks up there, and it was so quiet. Looking down and to the north, over the "edge" of the volcano was a silvery sea.... of clouds! It looked just like water; my eyes told me it was water, my brain struggled with the idea it was not, but it was definitely the 5 minutes worth of clouds we had driven through on our way up the volcano. I wish my pictures did better justice, but it was simply beautiful on top of the world that night.

By the time I was done playing with my shutter-speed, trying to get "the shot", it was nearly 11. The plan was to go looking for glowing lava, but Kim and the kids were done. We drove back to the hotel and dropped them off, and at 11:30pm we started our lava hunt. Dave and I had found our soundtrack on Lava Rock 101... how splendidly cheesy. :) There were two different sources for glowing lava I had mapped. We started with Kilauea in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Kilauea has been erupting constantly since 1983 and is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, right here in our no-passport-needed-USA people!!! There are two main sources for lava within this one volcano: the Halemaumau crater (of which we visited) and the Pu'u'O'o vent (the later of which has been the source of much of Hawaii's "devastation" as recently as March of this year). It took us about 30 minutes to reach the National Park. I was running on fumes at this point. It truly was everything I could do to even stay awake for lava. We drove maybe a quarter of a mile into the park, and as we reached a clearing, to our left were the first plumes of orange smoke in the distance. Any hint of exhaustion was instantly gone!

Let's take a moment to think about that: orange smoke... in the dark... We've all seen smoke at night, if you can see it at all. A grey mist with no definition, no form. This was definitely glowing orange, which meant it was illuminated by something orange... LAVA!!! I seriously cannot tell you how much I wanted to wet my pants! We drove a little further, constantly checking to make sure it was still there, until we reached the sign reading "Kilauea Lookout". We turned in. Turning off the car we were instantly aware that we were again cloaked in silence and darkness, the only illumination coming from a full moon and the erie, fiery glow coming from just down the way.

Following the paved path, we walked maybe 100 yards. In the moonlight, the landscape was devoid of color aside from the brilliantly colored smoke bellowing from a still unseen opening in the earth. The Hawaiians believed that the Halemaumau crater was the home of the goddess Pele, who showed her presence in a number of ways including Pele's Hair. When we finally reached the fenced lookout, it was pure majesty. A foot away was the edge of the summit, dropping 165 meters into the dark Kilauea caldera. Another x# of meters a way (it seemed very close in the night) we could see the very defined, very clear interior of the Halemaumau crater, the actual lava pit sending up its plumes of orange smoke.

I enhanced this a bit so you could see everything clearer.

the original

What do you say as you bear witness to the birth of our world? What does one say standing before one of the most primordial forces of our Earth? You say, "that is coolest f***ing thing I've ever seen in my life!" and you say it over and over again. :) I wish I could say that as I watched Madame Pele making her presence known, as she proved to me why the ancient peoples worshiped her, I wish I could say I had something of value, something poignant to say. But I didn't. Good thing my mom wasn't with me. There would have been soap involved. :)

another angle, this time with a tree! also enhanced

Damn the luggage weight restrictions!!! Damn them! In order to fly as cheaply as possible, not having to pay for an overweight suitcase, what did I purge from the depths of my vacuum-packed clothes??? My tripod... Damn you, American Airlines.

What a moment for a tripod...

I took probably 100 pictures of the crater from Kilauea Lookout. I was truly in awe of just how cool our world is. What an amazing window into... life! If all "nature" was this cool, Mom, I would be more into it. ;) On the way back to the car we noticed another paved path veering to the left, climbing higher up the summit. Assuming a better angle would follow, we hiked through the monochromatic darkness, through the barren, martian fields of what looked like giant cauliflower (in the daylight, it looked nothing like cauliflower) toward the Jaggar Museum. At one point we detoured off the path to the edge of the caldera (no fence here) so I could use a rock as my tripod and take another 100+ pictures, trying to the point of silliness to get capture a moment in time I may never recreate.

After exhausting every possible angle we could reach, Dave and I headed back to the Jeep, at loss for words to describe just how incredible our midnight excursion proved to be. Looking over our shoulder, one might assume we were looking at a forest fire in the night. It's truly amazing to think instead we were looking at liquid rock. I don't know how to describe that hour of my life in the length of a blog entry.

Humbling.
Simply humbling.