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The droopy-eyed driver of an indeterminate age began a long diatribe of the great benefits of organic farming and smoking weed. His sermon was passionate and personal and he did not realize that I wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. I was busy watching the trade winds pile up clouds on the eastern side of the summit. Mauna Loa is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, having erupted thirty-three times since 1843, most recently in 1984, and to watch the white mist block out my view of this smoldering giant was somewhat unnerving yet exciting.

Clouds or no clouds, I was going to walk up the face of an active volcano straight into that white mist, an adventure sure to be recollected in years to come by future generations of Timmerman’s— if I survived.

The beginning of the trail was a worn dirt path that wound its way among scrawny trees surrounded by a small amount of ground cover. Volcanic rock, rounded from weathering, hinted at the power beneath. With each step there was a little more black and a little less green. I was moving from life to death.

In the rain, I reached the Red Hill cabin that stood helpless amid the lava—unoccupied. I shivered uncontrollably as the temperature dipped
into the 40s. It was 7:30 p.m., the sun had gone down, my batteries were dead in my flashlight and I was becoming hypothermic.

I called it a day and stripped out of my wet gear, unrolled my sleeping bag on one of the eight bunk beds, crawled inside it and tried not to think about the emptiness outside the cabin and of that within.

My knees protested as I came to my feet. This second day of hiking was becoming monotonous. Ahead of me was lava and behind me was lava. Gradually rising ahead of me was Mauna Loa and slowly slipping off behind me was Mauna Loa.

The summit of mountains, and the climb to them, often provide one with sweeping views and broad vistas, but this was not the case here on “Long Mountain.”

This mountain is so big that when on it, for the most part, all that can be seen is “it.” I could discern only one other feature from the mountain, Mauna Kea. The nearby dormant volcano, which looks down upon Mauna Loa a thousand feet, houses high powered telescopes armed by, what I guessed to be, lonely astronomers. I felt as if I was being watched.

I pictured some astronomer bored in his chair aiming the telescope down at me saying:

“Let’s see what is happening on Mauna Loa today. Oh my word that lone hiker just mooned me. Harry, check this out. I discovered a new moon.”

As corny as it is, these imaginary astronomers became my companions.

Mindlessly, I followed the cairns marking the trail, a walking machine, trudging along up the enormous shield volcano. Suddenly I was back in Geology 101 being lectured by a professor nearly as old as the rocks he studied: “Blah, blah, I love rocks, blah, blah, there are two types of lava flows on shield volcanoes, pahoehoe and ‘a`a.”

In the classroom I couldn’t have cared less about the categories but now I came to appreciate the smooth rolling pahoehoe, and lament the crumbling-under-foot sharp-edged ‘a`a.

The glassy pahoehoe called me to rest on its smooth sun-warmed surface. As the air grew thinner, stops became more frequent. I started using my pack for a pillow to stare up at the marvelous blue sky until exhaustion brought on sleep.

On one such break, dreams of maniacal molten lava boiling the air, leaving everything in a red glow, filled my subconscious. The monstrous lava chased me about forcing me to run and jump over flowing rivulets and dodge droplets of red death raining down from above.

Awaking from the nap, I was snapped back into the nightmarish reality of my present situation—where although a fiery death by lava was highly unlikely, a mind-numbing death of boredom was not.

I reached the summit cabin with no sense of joy or accomplishment. The cabin was empty, made more so by the presence of benches for people to sit on, tables for people to eat at and windows for people to look out. I sought companionship in the cabin’s logbook.

Thumbing through it, I felt a brotherhood with those before me who cursed the endless fields of lava and the slow going miles. Voices, opinions, rants, raves, and personalities sprung from the pages. I added my own—a hollow paragraph on never-ending awkward silences.

From the cabin, I walked a short distance to the caldera’s edge where I sat dangling my feet. I kicked loose a lava rock and it plummeted 150 feet to the floor and shattered like glass. I counted the number of places on the floor from which steam rolled. I had reached nine when a wall of white mist rolled through the black, glassy canyon.

Lava, tectonic plates, and hot spots, are forces that have been at work for billions of years; I sat brooding my twenty-two and what logic had led me to walk up this god-forsaken hill.

Hawaii is a lush paradise and somewhere on the island below was a fruity tropical drink meant for my lips, a waterfall that had nothing better to do than crash upon my shoulders, and colorful fish lying in wait eager to play hide and go seek and there I sat on glassy lava, staring at lava, sick of lava.

“Starting tomorrow when I hike off this mountain, I vow never to step another foot on lava.” I hated the lava, but it didn’t care.

Mauna Loa, along with Mauna Kea and currently erupting Kilauea, formed and are still forming the Big Island. First erupting at the sea floor one million years ago, it took Mauna Loa 500,000 years to break the ocean’s surface.

Eventually through erosion, atmospheric seed dispersal, displaced birds carried by the wind to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and other miraculous acts, the island like its sisters was turned into a tropical paradise. Without the lava nothing would exist. It is a testament to the persistence of nature that a force that initially yields death, and from where I sat appeared to have nothing to do with the living, ultimately births life.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I sat alone watching the sun creep towards the black barren horizon, a fly on the arm of Mauna Loa, pondering life, death, and lava.

Kelsey Timmerman is a freelance writer, SCUBA instructor, and self-proclaimed touron (tourist + moron).

 

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