What the Light Uncovered

April 7, 2016

Thursday morning seeped in through a light, misty rain. 

After another slow morning the family drove back to Volcanoes National Park for a few smaller sights and shorter trails. 

Their first stop was at the overlook they had visited on their first visit to the park (April 4), when darkness hid everything but the glowing volcano in the distance. The morning light transformed the place, uncovering what had been hidden on their first visit. 

AJ walked up the path and read the first informative plaque, planning on a quick scan, but she stopped in her tracks, smiling at what she found. “Let Awe Possess Me” was the title on the sign describing how people from all ages, backgrounds and religions felt awe in the presence of mountains and the more obvious feats of The Creator.

Awe and wonder had been haunting her for days, though she couldn’t to get a good grip on them, but now, with the smoking crater in the distance, and the enlightening plaque in front of her, it sank deep into her soul, colored her views with delight and thanksgiving to Him who made her. 

Details popped. The sound of stones grating under her feet was distinct; the little cages around protected plants drew her curiosity. Plants and trees were more than green nothings now, they were individual organisms with unique flowers, leaves and purpose. The glowing volcanic jewel of the island meant something, it wasn’t just a burning hole in the ground. It stood as a heart wrenchingly beautiful and formidable part of creation. God’s signature saturated  it, and she could see it now. 

Come, Behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. Psalm 46:8

To man, it looked like desolation but, "... my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord." Isaiah 55:8 

As the family took in the view from the crater overlook for the last time, AJ’s mind swirled and swam in questions, questions she welcomed and jotted down in her travel journal. 

“What is awe and how does it come to be? Is it birthed in questions that don’t appear to have answers? Wonder is awe. In a way, it is an enjoyment of not-knowing, of letting mystery reign over you without pushing back. To keep a container full of questions dear to your heart and add hints you come across every now and then? Wonder sets you down content in front of natural vistas to stare for hours and breathe in the questions.”

“Wonder is a hopeful looking forward to revelation, a slow eking out of hints that may or may not build to an answer, but also a patience and contentment, a savoring of the question, a respect for mystery.” She scribbled these disconnected thoughts as she walked back to the car and rode to their next destination. 

A short trek lead the family amongst steam vents: humid, hot air rising out of holes in the earth from some mysterious depth. B spent half an hour trying to get good pictures of the phenomena, but couldn’t seem to do it. The steam was ghostly, camera shy in the strong sun. 

They followed Ha’akulamanu (Sulphur Banks) Trail among sulfuric, scorched earth ablaze in strange mineral colors. 

The next leg of their island exploration took them out of the national park, to the southmost part of Hawaii Island. A short stroll on the black sand of Punalu’u Black Sand Park afforded them a glimpse of a sea turtle struggling onto the beach from the water, and then a pensive pause at a water lily pond. 

Continuing south along Mamalahoa Highway, they stopped at Punalu’u Bakery, which specialized in Hawaiian Sweet Bread. It hails itself as the south-most bakery in the U.S., which provided lunch, and the most heavenly fresh-bread baking smells.

The ride to their next adventure rivaled the final destination. They turned off the highway onto South Point Road, to a dirt parking lot surrounded by what looked like ruins of modern-day buildings. The parking lot was filled with makeshift refreshment stands and big-wheeled four-wheel-drive trucks. For a price, locals with capable trucks will drive you to the green sand beach for a look-see, or you can hike it (about 5 miles roundtrip).

Not long after getting out of the car, they were approached by a local man offering them a ride to the green sand beach. AJ sat in the front of the double cab, beat-up truck, and B and the boys jumped in the bed which was equipped with bars in the bed for passengers to hang onto.

In between grinding gears, crawling over rocks and straddling deep gullies, the driver talked about the area. The 4-wheel-drive-only rule was not overcautious. The roads, if one could call them that, would chew up a normal truck and spit it out bent, scraped and ruined. The high-lift 4-wheel trucks the locals used looked pretty bad as it was. 

Green-ish Sand

After bouncing and scraping through a dusty winding labyrinthine knot of a road (the locals know the best routes to the beach) the truck stopped at the top of an incline that ended in a greenish-sand beach and the ocean. The driver allowed 1/2 an hour of seeing and sanding at Papakolea Green Sand* Beach. While wading into the surf, an aggressive wave caught AJ off guard, drenching her bottom half. To keep from soaking the truck seat, she sat in the truck bed on the way back. 

Next, they drove further south along South Point Road along wind-swept pastures, homesteads, and wind turbines to Ka Lae or South Point (the southern-most point of the US) and walked along the hole-pocked rock cliffs, where fishermen sat watching their poles and vendors sold wares out of the back of their vehicles. AJ bought a necklace, bracelet set of green rock.

The trunk of this tree is at the far left.
The wind blew it into this shape. 

They ended the day with take out pizza and a slow, last evening in their Hawaiian home away from home. 

As she sat thinking, pen in hand, the days on the island started to meld together, glued into place by wonder, tinted by awe. 

Hawaii Island is a land of fire below and ice above; of high-lift 4WD locals who pass goose-necking tourists on highways with a friendly Aloha; of jungles, deserts, plains, valleys, caves, beaches, cities and towns; of living, moving lava that rules the inhabitants, telling them where they can live; of the ever-present ocean that roars or whispers around it. 

Wherever AJ went, especially to places that differed from her home, she was impressed at the apparent simplicity of creation. Rocks (earth), water and plants: the same elements were everywhere, they were just used differently, appeared in different proportions and developed differently in different parts of the world. 

In Hawaii the elements of earth are on fire; molten rock flows from the earth. It's a place where one can witness land being born. The violent, burning story that is so hidden and lost in time for so much of the earth is visible here.  

The plants are bright green, of all shapes and sizes, allowed to grow luxuriantly all year around, never to go dormant or be threatened by frost. The trees and plants invest heavily in bright flowers to attract pollinators and dispersal agents. 

The ocean water spans amazing shades of blue, becoming calm and violent in turns. Fresh water runs down the craggy mountains in countless waterfalls into the ocean. 

All on an island a fourth the size of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

 *What is green sand? The sand at Papakolea Green Sand Beach and the stones making up the green rock jewelry AJ bought is the crystal olivine, a common constituent of lava that had erupted from a nearby volcano 50,000 some odd years before. The crystal is heavier than the black volcanic sand and tends to accumulate on the beach while the black ash drifts out to sea. 

Thanks for reading.