The Volcano

I don't know quite how to break this gently, but we went to Hawaii! Well…not ALL of us, obviously. Just a few of us. Let me backtrack: in November, I was thinking about Christmas and what to get Abe, who might or might not be on his mission by then. (And…this isn't really an interesting story, to be honest. Sorry for drawing it out like it's going to be.) 

Anyway—what with one thing and another, the following chain of events took place: I encountered, by accident, some deeply discounted flights to Hawaii—just as I was thinking about Abe and how he didn't really need any things for Christmas—and I knew he had always wanted to go see the volcanos in Hawaii—and then I ran the idea by Sam expecting to be brought back to earth by deadlines and finals and logistics—but instead found that the dates fell into an impossibly precise window of possibility—so we said a prayer and bought the tickets with a feeling of this is craziness—and then we just waited.

It was around Thanksgiving when this happened. The plane tickets were for early December, with its usual packed calendar of recitals, concerts, and parties. Abe didn't even have his mission call yet. He'd set his availability as "NOW" and for all we knew he'd leave before Christmas. Sam had two finals (to give, not to take…thank goodness we're past the "taking" days), as well as a bunch of freelance work to do…I had a nursing baby (who I figured could nurse in Hawaii as well as she could anywhere else)…oh, and let's not forget the eight other children that probably ought to be cared for in our absence. Anyway, I've always assumed that Hawaii is the sort of place you only get to visit once in a lifetime, if you're lucky. And Sam and I had gotten to go to Oahu when I was pregnant with Abe! So, I figured we'd had our 'once.' 

But…Abe's mission call came. Not leaving till January! And it turned out one of Sam's finals could move online, and if all went well we'd be home for the other one with three hours to spare. I arranged rides to the kids' rehearsals and classes while we'd be gone. Daisy and I made meal plans and cleaning schedules and stocked the fridge. Seb helped me talk to their manager so Abe could have work off that week. We kept it all secret from Abe, somehow. And it gradually dawned on me that everything really might work out so we could go!

We celebrated Malachi's birthday a week early. He had the idea to wrap Abe's plane tickets in one of his (Ky's) birthday presents, so we could take him (Abe) by surprise. (Generous of Malachi, wasn't it?) Abe was surprised! And we were all so excited! And that is how we came to be flying into the airport on the Big Island of Hawaii on a December afternoon, having survived 8 hours in the air. It was a pretty good flight for me and Baby Clementine (who was sweet and nursed for a good three-fourths of the flight) and Abe (who watched movies the whole time) but not Sam (who had terrible earaches from the air pressure). We were all very happy when we finally got there, though!

We stayed in a town called "Volcano" right by Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Teddy, who wasn't with us, but who is very interested in/terrified of volcanos right now, was quite concerned when he heard we'd be staying there, and had to be reassured several times that it was not actually IN a volcano. 

We had a cute little tiny rental house in the middle of the rainforest. We drove there in the dark, and it was raining off and on, and outside the car windows we could hear a loud "queeeee, queeeee"-ing. Tree frogs! It made everything felt very foreign and exciting. But the island is really dark at night—deliberately, because of the observatory up on Mauna Kea—and we couldn't get much sense of where we were. Plus, we were SO tired, and fell asleep almost immediately after arriving at the house. So in the morning, it was amazing to wake up to THIS:

Green everywhere! And warm, misty air so different from the December cold we'd left behind at home.

Abe slept up in this little loft.

It's amazing to think that all of this forest is growing on top of lava rock, but it is—you can see the lava peeking through in places, even where everything is so green and lush.

We explored around the town a little that morning (there was a sculpture garden and nature walk that were pretty), but mostly we couldn't wait to get to the National Park!

There are lava tubes all over on the island, many of them unexplored or not even found, I think. You can sign up for special lava tube tours, which would have been fun. But there's a very short and easy one you can walk through in the National Park and that was a great stop! Even just walking along the green, ferny trail is so good.

We've hiked in some 2000-year-old lava tubes in Southern Utah. The vine-covered entrance to this one definitely felt very different from those!

And it just feels different inside—knowing how recently there was real lava pouring through here! (Well…relatively recently. Around 350 years ago, I think.) When Teddy saw this picture when we got home, he thought maybe there was still lava inside! (I wish!)

As we hiked this trail back from the lava tube, my phone rang and it was Junie. When I asked how things were going, she said it was snowing at home! We could hardly imagine such a thing!

After the lava tube, we headed to the caldera. When we scheduled this trip, I knew vaguely that the volcanoes on the Big Island were pretty active, but I didn't know if they were just spewing out lava all the time or what. I had some moments of worry when I realized that maybe we'd go all that way and not get to see the "activity" of the active volcanoes after all. But, since I was pretty sure we'd love seeing the volcanoes even if there wasn't lava, and that we'd love the rest of Hawaii anyway, I didn't worry too much. 

When we were at the airport, I finally had a minute to look up what we could expect with the volcano. It turns out that Kilauea is only one of four active volcanoes on the island. Oh, would you like to know more about that? Here is what I learned:

Kīlauea, the youngest and most active volcano on the Island of Hawai‘i, erupted almost continuously from 1983 to 2018 at Pu‘u‘ō‘ō and other vents along the volcano's East Rift Zone. From 2008 to 2018, there was a lava lake within Halema‘uma‘u crater at the volcano's summit. In 2018, Kīlauea experienced the largest lower East Rift Zone eruption and summit collapse in at least 200 years. An eruption from December 2020 to May 2021 fed a lava lake in Halema‘uma‘u crater at the summit. Since September 29, 2021, an eruption has been ongoing within Halema‘uma‘u crater. About 90 percent of the volcano is covered with lava flows less than 1100 years in age. 

Mauna Loa, the largest volcano on Earth, has erupted 33 times since 1843. The most recent eruption in 1984 lasted 22 days and produced lava flows which reached to within about 7.2 km (4.5 miles) of Hilo, the largest population center on the Island of Hawai‘i. Lava flows less than 4,000 years old cover about 90 percent of the volcano. 

Hualālai, the third most active volcano on the Island of Hawai‘i, has erupted three times in the past 1,000 years and eight times in the past 1,500 years. The most recent eruption in 1801 generated a lava flow that reached the ocean and now underlies the Kona International Airport. Lava flows less than 5,000 years old cover about 80 percent of the volcano. 

Mauna Kea, the highest volcano on the Island of Hawai‘i, erupted most recently between about 6,000 and 4,500 years ago from at least seven separate summit-area vents, producing lava flows and cinder cones. Glaciers covered parts of the volcano's summit area during the recent ice ages, the only Hawaiian volcano known to have been glaciated.

So…the only really active volcano right now, the way I think of "active," is Kilauea. (Though Mauna Loa could erupt again any time, I suppose.) But it's not just constantly going. It does stop from time to time, and sometimes there's not much to see. So at the beginning of our trip we were all VERY EXCITED to read that Kilauea was indeed currently erupting, and you could hike to see the lava! The latest eruption had started in September, and we hoped it wouldn't suddenly fizzle out the day we went to see it. We felt a little bit of urgency to visit the active caldera as soon as we could!

It was a pretty easy hike—most of it was along an old road. The only sign of anything unusual was that there were big cracks and collapsed areas along the road in places, we assumed from seismic activity or magma chamber movement or fissures opening elsewhere! But I thought it was quite considerate of the volcano to put its lava in such an accessible place for us. I know there have been eruptions all around in different areas, over the years. I'd thought, before we arrived, that even if there was lava, it might be too hard for us to get to it! 

The landscape is so different here on top of…next to?…in?? the caldera. (I never quite grasped the entire topography of the place!) Can you believe this is just a couple miles from those rainforest pictures up above? It looks like a black desert. Or the moon. It's not quite a Utah-ish desert, though! It's got its own look.

It was so cool to come over a rise and see smoke rising up into the sky!

I wish you could feel what it was like to walk up to the edge and gaze down in and see REAL LAVA. It looks so far away in this picture! But it didn't feel so far. It felt amazingly close! (Though, of course, we would have liked to get closer…and Abe struck off on his own a couple times to attempt it. Eeek!) You could see the lava surging and spraying up out of the…what did they call it? Cone or vent? I think the lava bursts up out of the vent and then falls back down and cools and builds up to make a cone. Spatter cone! That's it. Anyway, it looks tiny within that huge caldera. But it's big—100 feet high. And the lava fountains coming out of it are 50-100 feet high themselves.

Here's a tiny bit of a closer look at it. You can see the orange lava splashing up out of the cone. It was fascinating to watch—the little "droplets" of lava (actually big spatters of liquid rock, of course!) seem to hang in the air so much longer than water would, and then they crash back down almost slowly. The lava just surges up and down, up and down inside that cone, and every once in a while there would be a huge jet of it bursting out, and everyone watching would say "Whoa!" 

You have to look at the video here to see how amazing it really is up close. It's hard to judge the scale of everything from up above where we were!

I had read that there was a lava lake in the caldera, and as we looked at the spatter cone we could see that indeed, the lava coming out of it was running down to fill up that "lake." In the picture you can see a red river of lava running down the cone (remember the cone is around 100 feet tall, so it's a big river/lavafall) and into the lake, and you can also see several other red hot spots of lava within the lake. It was so cool! I assumed the description of this area as a "lake" was a little generous, because it looked like mostly cooled black rock with a few molten spots glowing here and there, maybe where the liquid lava from the cone had just barely flowed over the top.

It was windy on the summit and you could hear hissing and popping from the caldera. My favorite thing was watching the lava fountains spray and collapse, and watching the lava flowing down the side of the cone. It was amazing to think we were actually watching a real volcano! We kept marveling at it to each other. Abe loved volcanoes so much when he was a little kid, and, like Sam and me, he had always maintained that fascination—and now all of us were really here! I kept trying to get Clementine to look around and enjoy it too, but she mostly just wanted to nuzzle in and sleep. :)

We hiked around a bit looking down into the caldera from different angles, but the road that would have gotten us all the way around to the other side was closed. (Maybe you can hike in from a different direction?) We didn't mind much, because all the views were cool—though none got us as quite close as we WANTED to get. We would have needed volcano suits for that!

Even just the rocks and the structures nearby were amazing, though. There were a few other craters that had held lava lakes in the past. There were places you could see black cooled lava flows cross-cutting the rock below. And there were rocks all over with cool twisty shapes or pumice-y textures or iridescent colors. So fascinating!

I felt so exhilarated after all of this. I just couldn't believe we made it here—the volcano was erupting—and we saw the lava with our own eyes! I wished everyone I knew could come see it too! I kept trying to text inadequate pictures to my mom and the kids at home.

We had heard that the lava was cool to see at night too, and we for sure wanted to do that. But I felt like even if we didn't manage it, we could still go home happy!

A couple nights later we drove up to the caldera again. We'd heard it got pretty crowded at dusk, so we waited until quite late to set off on our hike. We had phone flashlights, but we ended up not using them because the moon was bright enough to light our way. The stars were so, so beautiful! I knew I couldn't capture them without a tripod but that didn't stop me from trying repeatedly.

It was even bright enough to see our shadows, once our eyes adjusted!

One of the coolest things I've ever seen was after we'd hiked down the road for awhile and suddenly we could see a soft pink glow off in the distance. It was like sunset, but it was 11 pm! I couldn't believe the lava would make such a distinct glow. But what else could it be?

The glow got brighter. We hiked closer. (Look at this broken-up part of road!)

And then suddenly we could see into the volcano! It was amazingly bright. We couldn't believe what a difference the surrounding darkness made! The lava lake which I had thought to be not much of a lake—

was revealed to be a huge, surging, bubbling, mass of hot lava. A lava sea! I think our mouths literally fell open. It was like a whole different place than we'd visited in the daytime! And it's huge. I read that it's somewhere around 300 feet deep! During the day you couldn't tell the extent of it, but only see little hints of the glowing red parts.

I wish so much I'd had a better telescopic lens with me. Though, even then, I'm sure it wouldn't have done this place justice. It took me forever to figure out how to get the lava to be more than just a blown-out white glow in the camera. And really, I just wanted to stand there and STARE. The lava fountains were still exploding out of the cone, but now we could see that the rest of the lava was just as dynamic and restless. It moved like a slow-bubbling caramel, except instead of bubbles it was was jigsaw pieces of lava moving around—shattered black with orange and white and yellow peeking through.

It was still windy up on the volcano—I think you're at 4000 feet up there—and a tiny bit chilly for Clementine. So Sam, who was carrying her, headed back to the car after awhile. Abe and I stayed and watched the lava bubbling and spurting, and the red smoke rising up into the dark sky, for as long as we could. It was too fascinating to tear ourselves away. We were so happy and grateful to finally get to live out this lifelong dream of ours! It was the most amazing place. And it's so fortunate that it was erupting for us! I checked the volcano observatory website as I was writing this post and found that on January 2, the eruption entered a "pause," with no active lava visible at the surface, and stayed that way for nearly a month, so it could easily have happened that we didn't get the chance to see this glowing lava lake. I am SO glad that we did!

Honestly, if I hadn't had Sam and Clementine (and all the rest of the children at home) to get back to…I would probably be standing there still!