Worshipful Pele

March 3

Truly we drove into the rain on Friday. And truly we couldn’t drive far enough to entirely escape it on Saturday. But despite the general dampness, we had moments of sun. And brief moments of dry pants.

Before we ever got wet we did had a few only in Hawaii moments. Driving towards Volcano we stopped at a black sand beach created by a volcanic eruption of uncountable bits of tephra. Green sea turtles lounged on the shore in piles of chelonian laziness. They barely bothered to blink while we circled them with digital cameras.

Setting up our tent in the dark at Volcano National Park’s free campground, a wide red plume rose between us and Orion. Drawn to its source, we went as close as we could to the mesmerizing plume.  There we stood in a silent primitive awe watching black shapes form and disperse in the swirling mass of steam rising from the lava lake below. We gaped. We could only get close enough to see the reflection of the source of earth’s creation and destruction, but any closer would surely have killed us. We were staring at the pulsating heart of Pele or of Shiva or some other destroyer creator, at the manifestation of a kind of geologic omnipotence.

Once the rain began, the red plume pulsed on, it’s burning unaffected by water. Most of the National Park trails and even roads were closed. The lava lake was boiling too wildly and too close to the surface. Perhaps it was thirsty for tourist blood. We wouldn’t have been able to spend our only full day on the Big Island hiking in the park even if it hadn’t been pouring.

Instead we drank the first of many delicious cups of Kona coffee at a dive in Volcano.

And drove through drenched Hilo.

To the lava tubes, the derelict intestines of the active Pele we had seen the night before. We snuck into her bowels at an unassuming roadside picnic area. Tim, Jay and I followed cavern after ancient dripping cavern, daring each other to go further away from all vestiges of natural light. The rain dripped through the porous volcanic soil onto lava stalactites and onto our heads. Our feet waded through a roiling subterranean stream. With each step we got wetter and with each step we entrusted ourselves more to headlamp batteries that hadn’t been changed since last summer. Aside from them, the darkness was complete. We were spelunkers, encountering underground rivers, divided passageways, minute skylights of sunlight unreachably far overhead.

 Overexcited, Tim and I got ahead of Jay and found ourselves returning to a distinctive subterranean waterfall. We had unwittingly traveled in a circle. But Pele had been kind. She disgorged us at a known location. Expecting that Jay wouldn’t follow our lucky route, Tim and I began an exhilarating overland and underground search for our missing comrade. As we outnumbered him, he was the one that was missing of course. Splashing and scraping through the wet dark world created by lava was invigorating . So was the disorienting jungle of strangling spiky Hawaiian plant life on the ground above it. I didn’t care that the vegetation slashed through my pants or that the aa lava slashed my skin. Aa lava hurts and slashes.

The drive over the Saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea was damp and nauseating, but beautifully unfamiliar. The volcanic alpine zone. A tropical lake fed by permafrost. An island army base. The applicability of these concepts’ internal contradictions: Hawaii, domestic exotic.

Who cares if it rains.