Going With the Flows : Volcanoes gave birth to the island chain, and in one park, the delivery continues

Since I had been bringing up the rear of our group, plodding over the rough-and-tumble lava landscape along the southern coast of Hawaii’s Big Island, I was surprised to hear feet crunching rocks behind me. But when I turned to look, nobody was around.

It was a bit disconcerting to find that the sound, something like the shattering of wine glasses, was actually the tinkling of silvery flakes shed by a tongue of fresh lava as it cooled from flame-orange to metallic-gray.

Cool, in this instance, is a relative term. Molten rock approaches 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit (a rough figure, since lava tends to melt thermometers), and even after it solidifies gives off more heat than the Hawaiian sun. Kilauea Iki, a nearby crater we later hiked through, was flooded by molten rock more than three decades ago. It steams on today.

Walking amid new lava flows spewed from the broad flanks of Kilauea, the most active volcano in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, was like touring a blast furnace of creation. Nearly all the terrain had been created since the fall of the Roman Empire. Under our feet, still warm to the touch, was the newest earth on Earth.

“Watch your step,” said Christina Heliker, a federal geologist leading us. “No one’s been this way before.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

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Volcanoes gave birth to the main islands of the Hawaiian archipelago within the last 5 million years, no more than a tick on the geologic clock. For a close look at their innermost architecture, there are two places to go: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island and Haleakala National Park on the island of Maui. At these two parks you can warm your toes on fresh lava in the morning and dig them into a sandy beach the same afternoon. Or sleep in a clapboard cabin above the clouds, in the belly of a dormant volcano and then, at dawn, watch the sun burst out of the ocean, 7,000 vertical feet--more than a mile--below you.

My wife, Sue, and I set out last summer to explore this unvarnished side of Hawaii. We headed first to the Big Island, where lava is younger than the blacktop on your driveway, then to Maui, where a sparkling bowl of stars over your head echoes the long-ago fireworks of the sleeping volcano called Haleakala.

We did not realize just how close we would get to the powers that be. One of our first clues was the warning sign among our cluster of cabins at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. “CAUTION,” said the sign, fronting a grassy ridge, “Deep earth cracks.” We duly selected a cabin at the opposite end of the loop.

Our A-frame cabins were run by the company that also operates Volcano House, a comfortable lodge perched on the lip of Kilauea’s crater. Cabin-dwellers get towels, sheets and blankets (even Hawaii turns chilly several thousand feet above sea level), both a double bed and bunk beds, and a $32 price that is a bargain amid the islands’ other resorts.

Volcanoes are dynamic places. Steam billowed continually from Kilauea’s crater. (“The smell of sulfur is strong,” Mark Twain wrote during a visit in 1866, “but not unpleasant to a sinner.”)

Kilauea (pronounced: KILL-ah-WAY-ah) has been erupting from a vent on its flanks for a dozen years, its longest eruption in recent centuries, spitting out around 1.5 billion cubic yards of lava--enough to bury nearly 300,000 football fields three feet deep.

Cascading five miles to the sea, the molten rock has slowly added new acreage to the island, precipitating a debate over who owns the freshly baked oceanfront property.

Fountains of lava sometimes shoot thousands of feet into the air, but typical outbursts are more subdued. Most Hawaiian lava is both very hot and fluid like pancake batter. This steady coursing from the deep relieves pressure inside the volcanoes, gases do not build to the point where they cause violent explosions, like the one that in 1980 ripped the top off Mt. St. Helens in Washington state.

Perhaps the relative peacefulness of Hawaiian volcanoes is due to the demeanor of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire. It’s a testament to indigenous Hawaiians that their legends explain the creation of the islands as well as any geology textbook. Pele first built the oldest of the islands as her home, so it goes, but then fled the goddess of the sea, constructing new islands as she went. Finally, she arrived at Kilauea, where she continues her home-building today.

This story is reinforced by the displays in the Thomas A. Jaggar Museum. Seismographic squiggles show you Pele is stirring. Since the current eruption began in 1983, she has destroyed a residential subdivision and a national park visitor center designed to educate people about volcanoes.

Such a history was not too reassuring as I traipsed across crinkled lava flows where Pele’s tide was plunging into boiling ocean waves. We had followed Chain of Craters Road down toward the coast until we met an imposing roadblock: piles of lava that had coated the two-lane highway like hot fudge slathered over ice cream.

A ranger station, wisely housed in a big camper that can back up to dodge lava flows, dispenses guidance. Park rangers lead occasional walks across the lumpy lava flows. They also set out orange traffic cones marking safe paths to overlooks where you can watch Pele at work. We took off on a tour with Heliker, a geologist based at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, an outpost of the U.S. Geological Survey where scientists keep tabs on Kilauea’s temperament.

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As lava flows, its surface cools and hardens, leaving hard ground atop honeycombed tubes full of still-onrushing lava. Looking to our left, we could see steam and volcanic smog, called “vog,” where lava was sliding down the volcano’s side. Looking to our right, we could see billowing clouds where lava exiting the underground tubes hit saltwater, creating an acidic spray that felt like pinpricks on my skin and exploding into tiny grains that added to a new black sand beach.

Igneous textures underfoot betrayed the doings of the lava that had deposited them. Here, ripples suggested a mountain stream. There, pillowy mounds had pooled in a hollow. Someday these fresh stone sculptures might become but one story in an immense peak like Mauna Loa, to the north, the largest mountain on Earth. It measures 32,000 feet from its base at the bottom of the ocean, and is built entirely of lava flows 10-15 feet thick.

Heliker knelt and fingered up a fragment of dark parchment, so thin sunlight passed through it. “They call this Pele’s seaweed,” she said, as the light breeze swept it away. “It’s the shell of a lava bubble.” Broiling air shimmered on the horizon like a desert mirage.

Although the setting was the same on a return trip at night, the lava field looked as if it were another planet, one still molding itself.

As I scrambled up a ledge, careful to follow the traffic cones set out by rangers, my wife called to me. “Look under this rock you’re standing on,” she said, more curious than alarmed. “It’s orange under there.”

It was, we realized, orange all around. Clefts in the hard lava crust had opened ragged windows on the radiant channels below, like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle over an open flame. We were a few feet from earth that wasn’t Earth yet. Sidling up to the edge of the bluff where subterranean pipes were discharging lava into the ocean, we heard the roaring of a rushing river, the churning of a boiling pot and the howling of a high wind wrapped into one. Plus the light of a thousand brush fires leaping from ocean waves on whirling clouds of steam.

It was what Maui’s Haleakala used to be.

Compared to Kilauea, Haleakala is a quiet volcano, what geologists call dormant. It last funneled lava out a vent in its side about the time of the American Revolution. It is also much older and larger than Kilauea. Which makes it a monumental place to visit.

“How far to the bottom?” I asked Sue as we plodded like soldiers, back and forth, down a switchback trail etched into the wall of Haleakala’s gaping chasm.

“Don’t ask me,” she said. “I can’t see the bottom.”

Haleakala (pronounced: HALL-lee-AH-ka-LA) dominates one end of the island of Maui (the other end rises toward a more ancient, ramshackle volcano) and is the acme of Haleakala National Park. It is where ruby-eyed Pele made her home before moving on to the Big Island and where, according to legend, the demigod Maui lassoed the sun and ordered up more daylight so people could fish and farm. Haleakala became, “The House of the Sun.”

The crater rim is as high as the high country of the Rocky Mountains; the road leading up it climbs 10,023 feet over its 38 miles. The eroded crater itself covers 20 square miles, broad enough to swallow most of New York or London.

Haleakala’s most exclusive accommodations are inside it: three National Park Service cabins doled out, night-by-night, through a lottery. They have wood stoves, water and candles, but no electricity. The entrance hall is a foot-stomping hike down a 2,000-foot precipice in two miles of trail.

As we traced a ridge on the brim of the crater, which splits Maui’s weather in two, we skirted two worlds: one outside the volcano, and another inside. Cloudy mists rolled up the ridge like a perpetual wave, never dipping into the depths where Pele once reigned.

*

In one direction was fog-shrouded ferns and jungle; in the other was all shades of red and brown, the stark stomach of a geologic beast that, ages ago, would have roared at us through a throat of flame. We headed into that maw, where the predominant sound was the shrieks of pheasants, one of many human-introduced species running roughshod over native wildlife that had evolved in the islands. Dusk gave way to stars so bright that spiky lava tufts surrounding our National Park Service cabin sparkled silver, making clear why government observatories huddled on the crater rim. Even the most prominent constellations were buried in millions of other stars. Our distance from tourist Hawaii forged a tie with others who had fled the paved roads. California executives, a Minnesota lawyer, a graduate student from Texas, Maryland newlyweds, a retired German couple. All shared our campfires, wondering aloud about the earthen fireplace that had made our vacation spot.

The next morning, plodding up from Haleakala’s depths the way we had come, we laid over at the national park’s drive-in campground and, at dawn, joined a daily pilgrimage through clouds to the summit, where the sun begins its sweep through the sky. We had hundreds for company: bicyclers ready to whiz back down the steep road, Japanese tour groups and bathing-suited kids wrapped in blankets against the cold. Everyone whispered.

Only in Hawaii could a mountain silence such a crowd.

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GUIDEBOOK: Hot Footing in Volcano Parks

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: Lava viewing conditions are posted at park visitor centers and detailed on a hotline: (808) 967-7977.

Accommodations: Volcano House, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii, 96718. View of Kilauea’s main crater, 42 rooms; $88-$145 per room. Telephone (808) 967-7321. Namakani Paio Campground (run by Volcano House), three miles from Kilauea crater, 10 cabins; $35 per cabin.

For more information: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, P.O. Box 52, HI, 96718. Tel. (808) 967-7311.

Haleakala National Park: Expect a steep climb and watch for bicyclers.

Accommodations: Three cabins inside the volcano, accessible only by hike; one to six guests, $40 per night; seven-12 guests, $80 per night. Monthly lottery decides reservations; submit requests three months before desired date. Also two free campgrounds in crater, 24 sites, toilets, water must be treated. Hosmer Grove Campground, just inside park entrance; 25 spaces, free; toilets, water.

For more information, Haleakala National Park, P.O. Box 369, Makawao, HI, 96768. Tel. (808) 572-9306.

--M.M.