The Rambling Writer Visits the Big Island, Hawaii, part 7: Kilauea Volcano

Join Thor and me as we visit the volcano caldera and expansive lava fields created by ongoing eruptions still building this geologically-new island.

NOTE: After way too many months without travel, Thor insisted on an R&R escape to Hawaii this April. He’d been keeping on eye on the very careful Covid-19 precautions in the islands, and the testing required before flying there. And now that we’re both fully vaccinated, we took the plunge – literally, for some snorkeling in the healing sea, as well as exploring the Big Island and Kauai. After this detour (series started April 24), I promise I’ll finish up my Virtual Italy Vacation series soon!

Like most people, we’d followed the news of the destructive 2018 eruptions of Kilauea Volcano, and were eager to visit the site. Thor is a geologist, and we live fifty miles from an active volcano in earthquake country along the Pacific Ring of Fire, so you could say we felt like family. Fortunately for the Big Island residents, the volcano has settled down — goddess Pele apparently taking a rest — but I have to admit I was disappointed to miss the spectacular lava shows that visitors had been witnessing for several years before that event. Here’s a New York Times article with images from the recent eruptions:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/science/kilauea-hawaii-volcano-eruption.html

A lava lake at the summit in Halema’uma’u Crater had remained full for decades, providing colorful flows and shows. With the 2018 eruption and magma fountains 200 feet high, the caldera emptied of magma in several “rivers” flowing to the sea, accompanied by earthquakes, and dropped its level by thousands of feet. Now it’s mostly just steaming, but no one knows for sure what’s next.

To see the newest of the cooled lava flows, we headed south of Kona on our way to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. Along the way, the coastline reminded us of older flows now mostly greened.

A roadside viewpoint offered this illustration of the island geography and the way the traditional Hawaiians divided the land into “pie slices” of jurisdiction called Ahupua’a. Each slice included territory from the mountains to the sea, so that residents could partake of and trade for products of land and sea, as well as fresh water. Some of the divisions also included the anchialine pools that mixed fresh and seawater and hosted shrimp.

We were happy to discover that the annual Senior Pass we’d purchased at The Place of Refuge park also gave us entrance to the Volcanoes Park, where we headed along a short trail to the caldera:

Here you can see the steam rising from the collapsed floor of the caldera, where magma now below sea level is still cooking:

Hawaii has been very careful about pandemic precautions, and the park required all visitors to stay masked up on shared trails.

We then drove down Crater Rim Drive, through lush rain forest.

One of the endemic species — found nowhere else on earth — is the sweet Nene goose. People are asked not to feed them, but the gentle geese still approach cars hoping for treats.

Dropping out of the forest, we stopped at an overlook where we could see the darker river of recent lava overlying the older lava fields stretching to the sea. Farther along the coast, the housing development of Leilani Estates was evacuated due to the lava rivers and earthquake rifts that destroyed many homes. From just one fissure, the equivalent of 40,000 dump trucks of lava poured out every hour. The thermal power plant that provided 25% of the island’s needs was also destroyed. After about three months of flows, the goddess Pele took a nap. More than 13 square miles of land had been covered with fresh lava, and 875 acres of new land created along the shore.

Below the steep cliffs, the landscape of pahoehoe (smooth) lava is otherworldly and a bit disorienting. (Maybe that’s why I seemed to be tipping sideways for this photo.)

There are two types of lava in the Hawaiian islands — the smooth or ropy pahoehoe, below, and the rough or clinkery a’a type.

From below, we could see the black, solidified lava rivers that ran down to the sea.

Ever an eager petroglyph hunter, I was happy to explore the ancient carvings that luckily had been spared by the recent flows. We’ll see more of them next week:

*****

You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Cafe is available in print and ebook: The Ariadne Connection.  It’s a near-future thriller set in the Greek islands. “Technology triggers a deadly new plague. Can a healer find the cure?”  The novel has received the Chanticleer Global Thriller Grand Prize and the Cygnus Award for Speculative Fiction. Sara has recently returned from another research trip in Greece and is back at work on the sequel, The Ariadne Disconnect. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com