Kilauea Iki
This looks like a pretty big crater. The lava lake in the bottom of it is hard and relatively cool, so much so that you can hike down across it and out the other side. You might be able to see some people down inside if you look close. I didn’t hike down into it.
If you look across it to the other side you can see the steaming crater inside the even bigger Kilauea crater, which is huge.
So the picture is of a small crater, and in the background you can see an even bigger smoking crater, which is inside the really big crater of Kilauea Volcano. Iki means small, which is why the crater in this picture is called Kilauea Iki.
This morning we went to the eastern coast of the Big Island, where we’ve been staying this week. More on that later.
We arrived about 5 am because we’d heard the night before that the lava flow from Kilauea had once again come close to the old, ruined highway where it could be approached on foot with a reasonable walk. The best time for viewing is just before sunrise.
And sure enough, there it was, once again covering the already covered roadway with yet another layer of lava. Little ferns had begun popping up in the older, cooled lava flow. As this molten rock oozed and crackled across the previous layer, the little ferns burned quickly with tiny sparks shooting.
I didn’t poke it with a stick, but I could have. You could get within a few feet of the lava pouring out from under the crusty layer that formed atop the fiery red earth blood, but any closer and you risk your hair bursting into flames or your flesh cooking.
The whole island is made of this stuff, maybe the whole world. Looking at it, it made me aware that we live on a flaming ball covered with a cool crust – just cool enough for us to live here. This is the stuff of the solar system, of space, of stars, boiling up from the not so deep. What’s a couple miles when we are talking about planet sized ball of lava? We ourselves and all life on this planet, came from this hot earth life, and eventually, we’ll dissolve back into it.
Pele's fingers at work
We all live in a narrow shell of atmosphere squeezed between the vacuum of space and the magma just beneath the cooled crust.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes? I think not. Lava runs in our veins, and to lava we shall return.
Pele’s art is us.
