Spirit of Aloha | Features | November/December 2007

4 Walk the Fire at Kīlauea

PHOTO: RON DAHLQUIST / PACIFIC STOCK PHOTO: G. BRAD LEWIS / PHOTO RESOURCE HAWAI‘I

On the Big Island’s southeastern plain, the arid landscape wrenches and steams and spits, vivid in its gaseous definition. Kı¯lauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes and home of the passionate Hawaiian goddess, Pele, is now in its 25th year of continuous eruption. No part of Hawai‘i’s landscape is more capricious, or has more mystical significance. Lava spats and drools tempestuously or with monstrous apathy, off-handedly steamrolling subdivisions or silently seething beneath a cooled ebony crust, streaming like blood through quirky geologic veins and emptying in spectacular plumes at the sea cliffs. However it flows, Kı¯lauea, unfolding before you, brings new beginnings and affirms forces more powerful than ourselves. The land reinvents itself. Shouldn’t we always be reminded of this?

Kīlauea and Mauna Loa are within Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, established in 1916. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the park encompasses seven ecological zones plus superior visitor amenities: a visitor center, art gallery, the landmark Volcano House lodging, ranger-led activities, scenic roadways, petroglyphs, hiking trails, billowing sulfur vents, lava tubes—but the prime experience is left to Pele and her remarkable show of nature.

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