Below and Above; Darkness and Light

April 8, 2016

The morning greeted the family with a wet grey grimace, but it didn’t matter, where they were going, the rain couldn’t follow. 

For the last time, they gathered the luggage, stuffed it full of dirty clothes and underutilized, just-in-case items, tidied up the house and packed into the rental car, with one last look at their jungle abode. 

A few miles down the highway, over dirt roads eaten up with puddles of surprising size and questionable depth, they pulled into an unassuming driveway, ending in a small unimpressive house. This was the start of the Kilauea Caverns of Fire Tour. Donned in raincoats, in the house they were greeted by a friendly dog, happy to see them, and begging for affection. When another family joined them for the trek, they were all issued hardhats, gloves, flashlights and instructions then followed their intrepid tour guide in a line, to the wonder that lay so close, but hidden. 

The outside of the lava tube.

The other family in the tour was a husband and wife with a small child and a grandpa and a grandma. As they started down into the lava tube, AJ and family filed in behind the older couple, waiting patiently as the grandmother tremulously and with much support stepped down what seemed to AJ like simple steps, inconsequential rocks and small ledges. 

“I’m taking a walk every day for the rest of my life,” thought AJ. “I never want to get old and feeble.” She wanted to be able to move, explore and enjoy God’s creation even in her golden years, and not be timid and fragile as the grandmother in the group seemed to be. 

It was a vain desire. Age comes to everyone, she knew, and she couldn’t avoid it. But with care, effort and action, she might be able to put off immobility until the very last. 

A root growing into the cave.

A lava tube is essentially a cave made from flowing lava, the outside of which cools before the inside. When the lava stops flowing, it leaves a hollow cave-like structure. 

The sweet, damp smelly dog followed along, begging attention from the group every time they stopped. As they walked, ducking under low ledges of lava, they shined lights on the walls of the cave. They were surrounded by dripping, black lava walls, with fissures and ledges. The tour guide explained that there was not much animal life in the caves, and no bats, because bats rely on echolocation to “see” and as the lava rock absorbed their signals rather than reflected them, it was difficult for bats to “see” in the cave. It was the same for humans.  

When they reached a place where the tunnel narrowed significantly, they took an opportunity to experience real darkness. The whole group turned off their lamps and … nothing. There was nothing. Darkness muted and muffled AJ’s sense of being. No light passed through her eyes. It was darker than the darkest night, darker than eyes closed in a closet. A darkness that transformed “being” and turned one’s attention to the only thing that could be sensed: oneself.  Only sound and touch were left, and what those senses registered was not encouraging. 

Relief came as the guide turned on the flashlight again. The darkness was awe-inspiringly powerful, isolating, disorienting and shocking. Though in itself not bad or evil, AJ understood through experience why “darkness” was used as a metaphor for ignorance, want, evil and wrongness.  

 
They stopped at a Taco Bell for lunch, then sat admiring the step-like falls at Boiling Pots a while, waiting for their next adventure. 

They circled Hilo International Airport twice, trying to figure out where to go for the next and last stage of their journey. They finally parked and searched for the Paradise Helicopter Tours office. After being briefed on safety, they climbed into a doorless helicopter and took off. 

After surveying green mountains and myriad waterfalls, they stopped at home base to re-fuel and took off again. AJ and TwoSon, who now was in agony of what turned out to be very bad strep throat, sat in the back shivering in the chill wind. B and OneSon sat in the front. 

As they flew over the volcano, the temperatures warmed up and for a moment AJ stopped shivering. Below, molten lava churned and spurted, turning black as it cooled. Trees at the edge of live rock flow burned, making a desolate, but fascinating scene.

All during the helicopter ride, flying through the air to specific, flight-inspired songs, AJ’s hair whipped and whirled so that by the time they landed, her hair was in the first stages of becoming dreadlocks, and she wouldn’t have time to comb them out until 24 hours later, when she landed back home in Michigan. 

Dinner was a hurried meal at a fancier restaurant, accessed with uncommon ease, food served and eaten in an hour, then they went to the airport to turn in a tired, scratched, ice-creamed rental car and catch the flight home. 

But not directly home. First to LAX. The family was bleary-eyed, exhausted, bereft of awe and interest in what was going on around them while navigating airports, luggage lugging, check-ins and faint, hopeful glimmers of dreams of home. 

Though she moved zombie-like and exhausted through the last stage of the journey, she preserved the awe and wonder, inky words across pages of her notebook, to be sifted through and re-lived in the next year. Trusting that the words would make her trip much more valuable and filled with awe. 

Thanks for reading!

 

Macadamia nut groves