The Reluctant Voyager

Dear Reader:

It was a mercifully short flight to Hilo last night. We spent an hour driving to the southeastern edge of the Big Island, to what Peter described as a "gay, New Age resort." It was quite dark on the road and I was on the edge of my seat the whole way, wondering when the rivers of molten lava would lurch out of the shadows and engulf our car.

There were a few people in the lobby when we arrived. One man with dread locks and a faraway look sat in a corner playing a panpipe; not far from him, a woman in a colorful cotton dress made bad sketches of a scowling Tibetan goddess.

I confess, dear reader, that I am about as New Age as John Calvin, although New Age phenomena offend my aesthetic taste much more than they do my moral sense. The bloodless drumming, the off-key chanting, the almost complete disregard for new advances in deodorant technology — like, what's up with that?

It was a moonless night and Peter and I walked to a nearby ledge that juts out over the sea. The sky was on fire with stars. I had never really looked at the night sky before, but I remembered from my Boy Scout days that stars were supposed to twinkle and planets were not. I was surprised at the large number of stars that were blinking on and off. When Peter told me they were airplanes, I felt very stupid. And very alive, somehow. Stupid and alive.

Peter wanted to stay on that promontory all night. I kept watching the waves crashing beneath us, wondering which of them would finally succeed in eroding our ledge into the sea, tossing us into the jaws of hungry marine predators.

On the way back to our cottage we passed the resort pool. It was filled with naked men doing water ballet and singing Tiny Bubbles. A couple of satyrs, a few Bacchants in flowing white robes, and the scene would have been complete.

Peter didn't come home until dawn. "I found my root chakra," he told me. I asked him how it had ended up all the way over here in Hawaii, but he fell asleep before he could answer.

Dear Reader:

The goddess Pele welcomed us into her home today, and I'm a different man for it. Let me try to explain.

Who was the ancient Greek philosopher who said that all was flux? Whoever it was, he wasn't kidding. I've grown used to the ephemera of everyday life — the changing of the seasons, the rising cost of public transportation, and the latest thinking on whether or not Teletubbies has a strong gay sub-theme. But, dear reader, scientists have really started messing with my mind! I read in one popular science journal that the Egg McMuffin I'm currently holding might, through the magic of quantum mechanics, suddenly pop out of my hands and appear halfway across the universe on the breakfast table of some befuddled alien. And even though I've studiously avoided earthquake zones my entire life, it turns out the ground is constantly shifting beneath our feet. The sturdiest looking continent is little more than a mass of fractured plates floating aimlessly on a vast ocean of molten rock. Sometimes this molten rock pushes through to the surface of the planet, and when it does, it almost invariably ruins somebody's day.

I mention this last item because if I had thought for one moment that I was going to visit the world's most continuously active volcano, I would have packed my asbestos underwear.

The park ranger we spoke with this morning assured us there was little danger. "Use your common sense," he said. Dear reader, my common sense would not have me walking into the maw of a live volcano. He told us that some of the steam vents emitted hydrochloric acid and glass particles, and that we should cover our faces with a wet cloth. Hydrochloric acid! Glass particles! This park ranger, a dough-faced cherub from Montana, was suggesting that we protect ourselves from Satan's breath with damp cotton hankies! It took all of Peter's powers of persuasion to convince me to stay.

We spent the first part of the day crossing the now-dormant caldera of Mount Kilauea. There we saw a strange undulating landscape of lava slabs — it was kind of like walking through a giant pan of burnt brownies. "This is what every K-Mart parking lot will look like in a thousand years," Peter remarked.

I was relieved when we finally made it to the Ohia forest on the caldera's far side — cool and lovely after the scorching heat of the crater. A remarkable transformation. The surface of the volcano had been colonized here and there by tiny 'ohelo shrubs, drawing their sustenance from eroded lava and the occasional rain. By contrast, the forest was a wild tumble of tree ferns alive with motion and sound. We heard one bird sing the Hawaiian version of Shave and a Haircut in pure high tones. Another made a strange gargling sound, while a third mimicked the piercing squeaks of a dog's rubber toy. As evening fell, the chorus thickened with irregularly pitched chips and twitters, punctuated by an occasional high-decibel ko-kee!

"This is it," Peter said, as we got into our car. "We're going to see us some red hot lava." I swallowed hard, and my palms started sweating uncontrollably. The Chain of Craters Road descends for several thousand feet along the southern flank of Mount Kilauea. It cuts a swath through a forbidding landscape of weathered splatter cones, crossing back and forth across the side of the mountain until it reaches the coast.

"This is as far as we can go," Peter said. I knew from our guidebooks that the road ahead of us had been covered with lava a few years back. Night had already fallen when we got out of the car, so Peter didn't see the fear in my eyes. I'm sure he sensed it. There were grandmothers and grandfathers with their grandchildren, people of every race and nationality, flashlights in hand, feeling their way over the brittle trail of lava that hugged the coast. But I found little solace in their company.

"Look!" Peter said, pointing to a red glow in the far distance. "That's where we're going."

My heart sank. This was the domain of Pele, the volcano goddess who shapes the sacred land of Hawaii. The many stories I had read about Pele brought me little comfort on this occasion. She had many suitors, but few were lucky enough to escape with their lives. When Pele was angry — as she often was — she would hurl lava, or erupt and cover your village with ash and molten rock. This might be tolerated of a goddess with a gentle disposition, but not of one whom the legends describe as "capricious."

My fears started getting the better of me. Had I perhaps unknowingly offended the goddess before coming to her domain? Was it possible that she might see in my porcine features something of the pig-god Kamapua'a, her arch-nemesis?

I pondered this as Peter led me across the surreal landscape of fire and brimstone. There were no trees, and, in that darkness, not the slightest hint of a shrub. After a time, we found ourselves completely alone. The families that had started their journeys with us had long ago fallen back, put off by the lack of a clear trail and the noxious fumes that wafted over the area from nearby sulfur vents.

I stopped to feel the congealed lava underneath our feet: it was warm, bordering on hot. It had solidified into fantastic shapes: long skeins of black yarn and pools of rippled stone; braids and ropes of basaltic rock covered with a delicate glass skin. I felt a pang of guilt, regretting how carelessly I had trampled that beautiful landscape. When we switched off our flashlights, I became very disoriented. It was a moonless night and all was black, save for the outrageous canopy of stars overhead. Soon, new lights started to appear. To our left and some distance up the mountain, we could see what looked like a chain of small campfires. Ahead and to our right, but still a long way off, a flow of lava fell into the sea sending up an enormous cloud of water vapor.

As we pressed on, the heat became more intense. We could see the red glow of molten rock through fissures in the stone beneath our feet. The path was now hot to the touch. We could hear an eerie snapping and popping rising above the sound of the distant surf.

Just at that moment, a small bush burst into flames not ten feet away from us. I screamed and fell backward onto a mound of fresh pahoehoe. Without realizing it, Peter and I had wandered directly into the path of a slowly moving river of molten lava. Not far from the burning bush, we saw the lava break through the ground and ooze over a rock barrier into a shallow well. We could see the front line of the flow advancing in the dark. It glowed a dull red all along its length, except at places where a bright orange plume of liquid stone would emerge and jet forward of the larger mass.

I was balanced on the edge of a knife, torn between the desire to flee and the need to stay and experience the full blast of the approaching Leviathan. But where would I go? In which direction would I run?

The lava flowed inexorably forward, covering and re-melting the rock underneath it. The very air was on fire. We could hear a hissing and cracking sound that we hadn't heard before. Before I could catch my breath, Peter pulled me up by the collar to the top of an enormous lava boulder. We watched as the river of fire oozed around our perch and pressed on toward the sea. "This way," Peter said in strange voice. We felt our way in the dark. Our flashlights were now all but extinguished. The wind shifted suddenly and a light rain began to fall, lifting a ghostly veil of steam over the field of lava.

As I stood there, trembling and exhausted, I gave myself to Madame Pele; to the god of the wind and crashing surf; to the god of the stars whose light was strong enough to pierce our canopy of steam; to Him who had animated my senses and checked my fear long enough to bring me here, stupid and alive, into the arms of a dear friend.

We walked for another half hour in silence, stumbling over the sharp stone. In the dim light I could see that Peter's arms were covered in blood.

We were relieved when we finally found our car. The rain was heavy now and there was an impenetrable darkness all around us. Peter cranked the engine, but after it ran for a few seconds, it made an other-worldly sound and stalled. He tried several times, without success.

"Wait," I said, pulling a large bag of pork rinds from my knapsack. Peter smiled as I opened the car door and emptied the contents by the side of the road. "Barbecue-flavored," I told him, "Nice and hot, just like Madame Pele likes them."

"Let's just stay here for a while," Peter suggested. The sound of the rain was quite beautiful, so I popped in my Gabby Pahinui CD and settled back into my seat.

"What do you think of Hawaii now?" Peter asked.

"Such a lovely place," I answered him. "Such a lovely people."