Traveling in Style : PLACES OF THE HEART : Hawaii : In Hawaiian Legend, Halemaumau, on the Big Island, Was the Place Where the Earth Itself Was Born

In the Big Island of Hawaii, there is a fire pit said to be the home of Pele, the volcano goddess. I try to make the pilgrimage there as often as I can--about once every year or so--to stay in touch with whatever has empowered the air around that jagged bowl. Geologists say there is a great reservoir of magma stored not far below the surface, from which the molten rock pushes outward, looking for somewhere to release its orange curtains and seething rivers of fire. For the early Hawaiians, this was the navel of the world, the point through which the Earth itself is born and reborn.

For centuries, the broad and open pit called Halemaumau, now the centerpiece of Volcanoes National Park, was a boiling pot of lava, with bright fountains spewing and spurting. In 1866, when Mark Twain crossed the southern end of this island, he wrote back to the Sacramento Union that he had seen “bursting, gorgeous sprays of lava-gouts and gem spangles, white, some red, some golden . . . a ceaseless bombardment of unapproachable splendor.”

Those fires subsided in 1924, after steam pressure blew out a plug of solidified magma, filled the air with debris and noxious gasses and more than doubled the crater’s size. It is now about half a mile wide and quiet most of the time. In recent years, the dramatic eruptions have been located several miles down coast, beyond the park’s eastern boundary. But Halemaumau is still very much a sacred place, to be approached with reverence and respect, a small world unto itself, raw and empty, scorched and streaked, silent and still, yet somehow never at rest.

In the midst of a treeless moonscape, Halemaumau is actually a crater within a crater. Kilauea Caldera, which surrounds and contains it, is a rippled plain of gray lava about three miles wide and shaped like a skillet. One wall of Kilauea rises up right in front of me, and beyond it is the long, smooth, sine-wave slope of Mauna Loa, which, if measured from the ocean floor to the top of its 13,000-foot cone, is the largest mountain mass on Earth. Mauna Loa looms against the cobalt sky, while wisps and veils and plumes of steam remind me what is bubbling underneath the stillness.

According to legend, Pele ( PELL-ay ) carried a digging stick. Before she reached Halemaumau, she stopped at each island in the chain, each time intending to stay. With her stick, she would scoop out a place in the earth, lay claim to it and fill it with fire, only to have the flames extinguished by powerful waters controlled by her older sister, Na Maka O Kaha’i.

The truth of this legend, sung for a thousand years by storyteller-chanters, has been borne out by geologists who say that the Pacific Ocean covers a vast piece of the Earth’s crust, a tectonic plate with a “hot spot” at its center, a magma leak. They say each island was formed by this hot spot, lingering in place--as the Big Island now lingers--while the plate drifts north and west, an inch or two per year.

The legend tells us Pele stopped first in the far north at tiny Nihoa, so old now and worn by erosion that it is nothing but a barren chip. From there, she moved south to Ni’ihau and Kaua’i, where the famous Tahiti-like ridges have been made razor-sharp from the long assault of wind and water. On the next island, Oahu, Pele dug out the crater now called Diamond Head, releasing new lava and angering Na Maka O Kaha’i. The two sisters were soon locked in battle. The water-sister prevailed, and Pele had to move farther south, this time to Maui, where they battled again, on the slopes of the now-dormant volcano, Haleakala. Again Pele lost. Her body died, and her bones were scattered, but her spirit-form rose up and moved across the channel to her present home near the southern coast of Hawaii, the youngest and wildest island, a region where her voice is still loud and her fires still burn.

For local Hawaiians, this part of the story is more than a folk tale. When they say the steaming fire pit is Pele’s home, they do not speak figuratively. They mean she lives there. I have yet to meet anyone, Hawaiian or otherwise, who has been on that island for long who openly disagrees. I have heard some very level-headed people claim to have seen her face in the smoke as it billows up from fire fountains.

As a deity from an older era, Pele has survived into modern times, and the lip of the fire pit now serves as a kind of altar. Just beyond the observation railing, along the outer edge of burnt rock, offerings left to honor her and the spirit of the place include leis, cut flowers, plates of fruit, the flat, green ceremonial leaves of the ti plant or lava rock wrapped in ti leaves.

I am grateful when I see these offerings at the edge of that awesome precipice. I am glad there is a way to acknowledge whatever power resides out there. The fire pit’s walls are streaked with rust and yellow sulfur. The stinging sulfur smell surrounds me. When I’m close to a vent, the steam is translucent vapor. Seen from a distance and backlighted by the sun, the vapor turns white, sending up luminous banners against the lava’s gray and black. The air, meanwhile, has uncanny weight. At 4,000 feet, the oxygen may be thinner, but something else has thickened the atmosphere, and it gathers around me like a cloak.

At Halemaumau, the air is alive; the rocks are so alive that they seem to speak to me. I like to hunker next to a rocky vent and hold my hands close enough to feel the deep heat hissing up from the restless and blood-red caldron that once fueled Diamond Head and Haleakala. Call it vapor. Or call it the breath of the goddess who lives inside the fire. Maybe Pele is another word, another form of reverence for the Earth’s own mysterious pulse.

GUIDEBOOK: Pele’s Fire Pit

How to Get There: To reach the crater region from the Kona Coast, follow Highway 11 south to Na’alehu, then across the Ka’u desert to the entrance of Volcanoes National Park. From Kailua-Kona, it’s about 100 miles. Inside the park, Crater Rim Road loops around Kilauea Caldera. A parking lot for visitors to Halemaumau is well-marked.

Admission: $5 per car and $2 per visitor arriving by foot, bicycle or tour bus; anyone 62 or older admitted free.

Where to Stay: Overnight visitors may camp or book a room at the Volcano House Hotel, situated on the edge of Kilauea.