When Peggy and I visited Hawaii’s youngest and most active volcano, Kīlauea, on January 17, we took this photo of lava erupting 200 feet into the air in the Halemaʻumaʻu Crater.The location of where we are staying for the month in Sea View, Hawaii at the Starlit Skies of Kalapana VRBO rental (Very nice). To provide perspective Hilo is 32 miles north of us via road and the Kīlauea Volcano is 46 miles to the west.
The Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire, Pele, is said to live up in the Kilauea Volcano. She’s been restless since we arrived, spewing lava into the air and covering the floor of the Halemaʻumaʻu crater.
A painting in the park’s headquarters showed an artist’s conception of Pele. You might say ‘she’s hot,’ too hot to handle in fact. The temperature of lava when it erupts is somewhere between between 1,300 to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. Early Polynesians who arrived by boat between 1000-1200 CE, have a myth describing how Pele ended up on Hawaii: she was escaping from her sister, Nāmakaokahai, goddess of the ocean. In one version of the myth, Nāmakaokahai was jealous of Pele’s beauty and strength; in another, Pele had seduced her husband. (Before you ask, the egg contains Pele’s younger sister and companion, Hi’iaka),
Scientists have a different theory of what makes Hawaii one of the most active volcano sites in the world. It is sitting on top of a hot spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where lava is rising up from the earth’s mantle. The island is making its way over the hotspot as the Pacific Tectonic Plate moves in a northwest direction at a speedy 2-4 inches per year. With the exception of Maui, the other islands have moved beyond the hotspot and their volcanoes are extinct. A new island named Loihi Seamount is currently being created about 20-30 miles southeast of where we are. You can expect to see it rise above the ocean— if you are around— in about a hundred thousand years or so.
Most people think of the Hawaiian Islands as being the green ones on the lower right. There are actually 132 islands, atolls and undersea volcanoes included in the chain that extends over 2600 miles toward Alaska’s Aleutian Islands! They all originated over the hot spot that the Big Island now occupies. The area within the dotted line is the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Reserve (Pronounced Pa-pa-hah-now-mo-koo-ah-keh-ah in Hawaiian.) You will be quizzed on the name and its pronunciation later. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map.)Peggy and I standing in front of the Kīlauea Crater as the volcano does what active volcanoes do. The last time this particular section of the volcano erupted was almost 50 years ago. I was on the island at the time. The National Park had built a walkway out to the crater so visitors could look down into its seething mass.This time we were at least a mile away. Fortunately, we both have excellent telephoto lens.We could look into the heart of the crater. This is a close up of the lava spewing out.Two vents were blasting away. Note the lava flowing out of the vent on the right as it covered the crater floor.A view of the vents and a portion of the floor.A plume rose from the volcano and played hide and seek with the sun. (This is how far away the volcano looked without our telephoto lenses.)The plume led to a photo op, and an observation…At one point, the plume looked almost like a mushroom cloud created by an atomic bomb. It wasn’t, of course, but it did serve as a reminder that volcanoes are more than tourist attractions. They are dangerous, sometimes extremely so. Even the cloud carried a risk: Vog. Think smog but worse. When we were there, the National Park had posted a health advisory alert. We were also told to be on the lookout for Pele’s Hair. One could only ask, “what?” The National Park provided a photo…Looks like hair to me, but who knew Pele was a blond? Actually it is volcanic glass produced from lava stretched into thin strands and transported by air. Touching is not advised. It can break into small splinters and enter your skin.What we saw had already been broken into small pieces. I didn’t try to pick up one. Of much greater concern than the vog or Pele’s Hair is what magma decides to do when it erupts as lava. It depends on the type of lava. All magma holds gas that is highly compressed under intense pressure in the earth’s mantle. As the lava approaches the surface, the gas expands and has to escape in one way or another. Thicker lava, like that found along the Pacific Rim where the Pacific Plate is plunging under continental plates, holds the gas, not allowing it to escape. The result is violent explosions that lead to the creation of steep, conical shaped, composite mountains like California’s Mt. Shasta shown below.A photo of Mt. Shasta I took while I was hiking down the Pacific Crest Trail. The devastation created by these explosions can be extensive. I flew over Mt. St. Helens a couple of weeks after it erupted in 1980 and thousands of trees had been blown down by the eruption.This photo by Jim Hughes of the US Forest Service shows what I saw. Between asphyxiation and burns, 57 people lost their lives because of the eruption.
The lava flowing out of the volcanoes on Hawaii is much thinner. The gas can escape in bubbles. It doesn’t have to explode and is much ‘kinder,’ so to speak— if you don’t mind seeing your homes and roads burn and disappear under thick layers of lava. No one was killed in the major 2018 eruption that took place near where Peggy and I are staying. People could walk faster than the lava was flowing. The eruption will be the subject of our next post on Hawaii.
But first, as promised, we will return to our fall journey down the Danube River and the historic town of Kalocsa, Hungary where we visit a library featuring thousands of illustrated books that are hundreds of years old. I found this Adam and Eve illustration humorous. Is Adam holding a duck? (The words underneath are mine.)“Eat the apple,” Snake urges. “God made it. What could possibly go wrong?”
Wandering through Time and Place 