The Rambling Writer Visits the Big Island, Hawaii, part 8: Petroglyphs!

Join Thor and me as we walk among thousands of petroglyphs carved in lava beds by native Hawaiians.

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!

I am a big fan of petroglyphs — they figured prominently in my Caribbean suspense novel Islands — which just happens to be on half-price special this month at Book View Cafe https://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/book/islands/

I’ve gone out of my way to visit petroglyphs whenever I’ve had a chance. During my scuba divemaster sojourns in the Caribbean, I heard suggestions that these mysterious, usually undated carvings in stone were connected to spiritual “power spots.” When I worked as divemaster in the Honduran Bay Islands, there was a large, spiral-carved glyph behind my shoreside cottage. Since the island had no roads, locals got around in dinghies, following a predictable route through the shallow corals inside the reef. Almost without fail, the motors would cough and die as the boats passed the glyph. Hmmm. But I digress….

I couldn’t miss the chance to see some of the roughly 23,000 petroglyphs the native Hawaiians had carved in a 400-700 year-old lava bed below the Kilauea volcano that we visited in last week’s post. Luckily, the new eruption of 2018 had spared these historic petroglyphs! And this friendly Nene — one of the protected endemic birds — urged us to drive just a bit farther to see the glyphs.

We set out along the “trail” of lumpy pahoehoe lava. Tough foliage has sprouted along the cracks in this old flow.

Farther along, we started to see expanses of the carvings.

For anyone who’s been to Hawaii, this human shape will be familiar from countless T-shirts and other memorabilia:

The petroglyph field has been, and remains, important culturally and spiritually.

Here’s an image of sweet Honu, the sea turtle. We love to snorkel with them (the live ones, that is).

We were surprised to learn about this early farming method among the lava fields:

Here’s the Yam garden in the piled rocks:

The petroglyph field remains a pilgrimage site to honor the family and new births, as a hole is carved to place the baby’s umbilicus:

To geologist Thor, the natural forms of the cooled lava are almost as interesting as the petroglyphs. Here, ropy pahoehoe lava makes an artistic pattern:

And here is the cast of a plant, this portion about three feet long:

With all that black lava rock reflecting the heat back at us, we were hot and thirsty, and the distant sea looked cool and beckoning. After thanking the spirits here, we were ready to head back. Mahalo!

Next week: Farewell to the Big Island with our most exciting adventure here — a night swim with giant manta rays!

*****

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