It took us a week to build up to our first pre-dawn hike to the lava flow. I'm not sure why.
We talked to a lot of people. We went to the county viewing area three times. We had lunch with volcanoman. We took a boat ride that came good and close. I did a phone conference with the East Coast one morning. We slept in another morning. Finally, on Saturday morning, a week after we'd left home, we got up at 4:00 a.m., put our flashlights in our packs, had dark chocolate and passion fruit for breakfast, and headed out to the flow.
We drove to the parking area for county viewing, slipped under the "DO NOT ENTER" barricades across the old paved road, and walked straight ahead. There was a light rain and the stars were clouded over. After a short distance, the road dead-ended in an old flow of lava about four feet high. We climbed onto the flow and looked around. Dead trees lay scattered about. The plume was just barely visible to our left – we headed that way.
A flashlight appeared in front of us. Someone else was out here. A woman appeared out of the darkness, an apparition of the ‘60s, wearing a fringed suede skirt, headband, and I asked Ken later, was she even wearing shoes?
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I was getting lost.”
“Were you out at the flow?”
“Yes. I go most days. But today I don’t have a good feeling. Something isn’t right. Be careful out there. Thank you for helping me find my way.”
And she disappeared into the darkness in the direction we had come. We continued on. I was wondering if we’d met the volcano goddess, Pele, or was my imagination on overdrive?
“I think someone built a campfire out there,” Ken said.
I laughed. It wasn’t a campfire. It was the light of the lava flow reflected in the plume of steam rising into the sky.
The walking wasn’t easy. The black lava is rough, uneven, and sharp, with cracks sometimes a foot wide or so. It flows up and down like waves, with troughs and peaks. If you trip and fall, the lava will cut your hands like glass. I go slowly. Ken walked ahead, eager, and not quite recognizing the dangers until he tripped, and cut his hands up a bit. Then he slowed down just a little, still not quite as deliberate as I am. He was finding our path, towards the glowing light of the lava entering the sea. There were other pinpricks of lights, other people out there.
We came across a big trough with no clear path across, and worked our way down into it, deep enough to lose sight of the plume before we climbed back out the other side. We almost stopped there, to wait for more light. Ken told me that he “underestimated the creepy factor” of walking on lava in the dark.
Then we found we were walking on sand. Hot liquid rock meets the cold water of the sea, and in the explosion is spun into glass and shattered into fragments of sand. The long thin strands are called Pele’s hair. This was the newest land on earth that we are walking on. It crunched beneath our feet, but that’s barely audible because of the repeated littoral explosions of ocean and rock in front of us, throwing liquid rock high into the sky, painting the steam cloud with a watercolor wash, highlighting the spray of flaming red and black.
We were walking across the tube, the area where the lava was traveling under the ground. As I looked back towards the cliffs, the tube was visible in a line of sulfurous steam rising through the earth. The steam felt warm on our legs. The earth beneath our feet wass a rough combination of sand and larger tephra cinders. We climbed to the edge and looked over.
“I’m scared,” I said. This is as close as I’ve ever been. I know these sand castles of tephra are built up and collapse into the lava and boiling sea beneath us. I know this land is as unstable as life itself. That thought relaxed me a bit. Safety and security are an illusion whose pursuit only increases anxiety. It helped that I’d stated my fear out loud.
“You’ve been to a lot of lava flows before,” Ken said to me, surprised that I’d said I’m scared. “How would you rate the danger, code yellow? orange? red?”
“This is RED. All RED. You are standing on top of a fragile tube that might crack open at any time. You can fall into that 2000 degree red river of rock. Or this whole bench of new land could collapse into the boiling sea below us. This is all RED.”
“Oh,” he said, and picked up his camera to take an incredible picture.
Later I see him describe the experience. “I was high. I was seeing creation.” He gesticulates with his hands. His voice rises. His audience is listening intently. He is changed by this experience, and I understand why.
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