Ever Before

April 5, 2016

Tuesday slipped in cool and slow. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a rooster, hidden by jungle, crowed about the glorious morning, the wild birds stopping their songs to let him have his say. Cereal, coffee, nuts and fruit were waiting in the kitchen. 

Although she was the only coffee drinker in the house, AJ wasn’t an avid one. There was a time when she drank the stuff everyday, laden with cream and sugar, but now, cream and sugar were off the menu. Needing energy and bereft of her usual “rice milk drink,” she faced a black steaming cup of Hawaiian coffee with a little unease. 

 “Why isn’t this bitter?” she asked a few sips into the steaming cup. Because she was in Hawaii, a state known for quality coffee. Coffee, as Alton Brown once said, is not supposed to be bitter. AJ’s epiphanic experience with Hawaiian coffee set off an interest that had her delving into Turkish, Greek, Espresso coffees, etc. that was fuel enough for a blog entry that may not ever see the light of day. 

The house was cool, but filled with light. Excessive heat was not a problem on the east side of the island. The house sat on stilts, open underneath, the floors were cold in the chill mornings. Lack of rain was also not a problem. 

The morning crawled on, the family snug in the cool, wooded house, slowly waking, intent on electronics. From the couch, B sighed.

“Weather …” he said. 

“What?”

“It’s going to rain tomorrow, so I rescheduled the helicopter tour, but now I don’t know what to do.”

There were a few things that dictate where and when the family went places during the week, and none of them was a person. Light, or sunset and sunrise, and weather (which would either allow light or block it, or get expensive electronic photographic equipment wet) were the dictators, especially when one of the party was intent on optimizing conditions for great photography. 

And it doesn't take just a quick look at the weather map. It’s consulting astronomy charts, knowing where stars will be, the minute the sun rises and sets, maps with locations, certain atmospheres, etc. Add cloud cover and rain into the mix and you have a flurry of elements that boggles the mind when considering travel activities.

With the next few days’ weather looming over them, they left the house and headed back to Volcano National Park. The Pu’u Huluhulu Trail was first, a walk across miles of solid pahoe'hoe lava to an overlook, past curious flora that insisted, despite the odds, on flourishing. 

The Volcano House served a great lunch with a view that overlooked the volcano. As they sat, they planned some more, then smashed pennies and browsed the gift shop, thankful for the non-trail bathrooms. 

After-lunch they drove down scenic Chain of Craters Road to where the lava meets the ocean, stopping at picturesque spots along the way, providing opportunity for car-sick OneSon to switch seats with AJ and tamp down the travel-induced dizziness.  

At the end of Chain of Craters Road, B and OneSon hopped the rope barrier risking their lives at the edge of the lava cliff to take  pictures of the Holei Sea Arch while from yards away, AJ and TwoSon fumed and “tsk-ed” at their daring feat. 

When the two were safely back on the right side of the rope, B suggested a hike.

“This road leads to  a lava flow that went across the road,” B said. Real-life evidence of the destructive nature of lava lay ahead, and the family wanted to see it. 

A nice smooth paved road ran on for miles ahead of them, cutting neatly through a lava-encrusted slope, but AJ and TwoSon preferred walking on the smooth pahoe-hoe. Eventually the paved road turned into lava-gravel. 

AJ could hike the hikes, climb the trails, see the sights, but she was slower than she used to be, which gave her a heart-pleasing view to every hike. She often lagged behind, and B and the boys, unless B was taking pictures, were ever before her. Hawaii provided backdrops of black plains of lava, of lush green jungle and brown prairie, but what was ever before her plucked her heartstrings, resonating emotion into the experience.  

  

After walking so far that it elicited complaints from TwoSon, and never seeing the obstructive lava flow, they headed back, and found out at the information station on their way out, that lava no longer covered the road, it had been cleared.

On the way back up the Chain of Craters Road, they stopped at a lava tube OneSon had spotted, where a spider had set up a web, ready to catch dinner. 

They traveled back near their jungle ohana, where they ate at the Lava Rock Cafe, where AJ had the Kapuna Pork for the second time, this time realizing that it did not have much seasoning.
  

With sun sinking and night taking over, the family returned to the Jaggar Museum and Overlook, amidst an overflowing parking lot and museum teeming with visitors. B jockeyed for a good position to photograph the glowing pit in the earth while AJ, OneSon and TwoSon browsed exhibits over and over, filling their wait time with lava lore, science and facts, and people-watching.