Every time I think that this job has run out of wonders to offer me, life offers up something else. In this case, the chance to see the very earth erupting, to see the very way the world was born; millions of years ago.
In six years with the company and multiple occasions to be near or around Hawai’i I’ve never had the opportunity to see an active volcano; whenever we have passed one I’ve been working or the route has been such that we’ve ended up having to bypass. This evening was our last chance to see the active lava flow before we move on from Hawai’i for the season – if I didn’t see it now I wasn’t going to get another chance for a long while.
I have never seen anything like it.
The entire ocean glowing orange, steam billowing up to the sky like the remnants of a fireworks launch only heavier and hotter than anything that we could have created with mere fireworks. This is nature’s fire, volatile, untameable and utterly destructive. And absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.
That’s the very way the world was born…
It comes from millions of miles deep in the earth
Yup, and we’re just floating on top of it….a little tiny thin crust of earth drifting on top of that.
Dust, millions of years of dust floating on top of it
The world is still young and churning beneath the thin skin of dust we tread on every day, I think we forget about that sometimes. I certainly did, until tonight when I was faced with the reminder of it pouring molten hot into the sea.
The movement of the lava behind the steam cast shadows into the air, making it look like there were figures there, dancing, walking, crossing the flames; part of some other world that we are only on the fringes of. It is easy to understand why our ancestors believed such things to be the providence of the Gods…they were not wrong, looking at that volcano tonight I believed in Pele, and I honoured her, and I feared her…
And I am grateful that S/he allows us to walk daily on her back…