Drive-by despatches from active volcano eruption: walking with the gods

Some mornings are smoky with a base note of sulphur, but mostly just aromatic woodsmoke from the lava flow burning through lowland Ohia forest.

Some days the plume of lava and gases is clearly visible. If one doesnʻt know the area, the plume could just be mistaken for puffy white clouds.

Wherever I am these days, I find myself scanning the horizon, orienting myself in terms of the evidence of Tutu Peleʻs slow advance. A new north star: the active flow front.

 A little town prepares. Shipping containers appear alongside houses in the projected direct line of the flow.

We go to civil defense update meetings. Strangers talk to one another. There is common ground. Everyone is asking: "whatʻs the plan: go? stay? where the flow? Where She now? What She doing? She will do what She wants...."  Social media support sites proliferate like popcorn, some kookier than others. group prayers are organized. It is a pickerʻs paradise with yard sales, lava sales, moving sales.

There is a bit of a frontier, wild west atmosphere to a town which has always had a reputation for being a little different. All going with the flow now. Literally. Maybe. Never has "be here now" been more appropriate.

There is a video of a recent flyover of this particular lava flow here  which shows the fire in lowland forest part well and explains our smoky mornings. This company: Big Island Video News has recorded some interesting pieces on this lava event.

Going down to the coast for a salt water soak at dawn, I find wild pigs (puaʻa) happily rooting on the side of the road. Usually puaʻa are shy and do not allow me to photograph them. These two youngsters glanced my way, but obviously the attraction of what they were feasting on outweighed any possible threat I held.

This is the second time in a few weeks that puaʻa has locked eyes with me.

Kamapuaʻa the pig demigod in Hawaiian stories is closely associated with creation goddess Pele as her lover, and thus creative partner in seeding the earth for agriculture to begin.

As a gardener I feel fortunate that puaʻa are around - their promise is of fertility. Something is germinating. It is good. It will feed.

Then too Kamapuaʻa is also a bit of a trickster. The course of the Pele-Kamapuaʻa love neʻer did run smooth. Kamapuaʻa is also the protector of the wounded/broken heart.

In the end: redemption in the garden.

O ku‘u wahi opu weuweu la nou ia. 

[A Hawaiian proverb about hospitality. Direct translation: My little grass shelter is yours]

Ke ala o ka mahina : harvest moon, edition 2014

Even in a 360 day growing season, there are moons. Beautiful moons.

The harvest moon, huge and yellow, kept me awake for nights.

The traditional Hawaiian planting (and fishing) calendar follows the phases of the moon. I am lucky to be able to access Ke Ala O Ka Mahina (the path of the moon) online, though I am also gradually getting a feel, from the night sky, as to what I need to be doing in the garden.

At this full moon I planted out three little kalo plants(aka taro - colocasia esculenta) of the variety with the black spot at the piko (belly button) - the place where the stem attaches to the leaf. I found this plant at Amy Greenwellʻs ethnobotanical gardens. In this pic there is a bead of water making the dark piko look a little red.

I also harvested that big bunch of bananas, mentioned earlier.

About a third of these have already, at time of writing, been gobbled up fresh - delicious pinkish yellow oh! so sweet flesh. Half of the harvest has been dehydrated, and others  frozen for smoothies/ice cream or shared with neighbours. There were upward of 120 bananas on this stem which is seen broken down into hands in this image.

The peels from the massive dehydration of about 60 bananas (9 trays full - my entire deluxe version dehydrator) will go to fertilize next seasonʻs fruit.

I also did an accidental harvest of a few small tubers from my garnet skinned, orange flesh sweet potato variety when I was clearing a space for the new kalo plant. The "parent" for this was a store bought sweet potato which had sprouted so it was also an accidental planting in some respects though, being a colour junkie,  I do love the garnet and bright saffron colour combo.

My sweet potatoes have tended to colonize a lot of garden real estate. When I remarked on this in my gym class, I was advised by a long time kanaka gardener to not allow the vines to spread thus, but rather to turn them back on themselves. She told me that as children on the family farm they were assigned to twisting the ʻuala (sweet potato) vines. I do love and am so grateful for my kumu (teachers) everywhere.

All this wealth just a month after a hurricane. The earth and the plants are so resilient. Ke ala o ka mahina is a good path to follow.

Hoʻokupa for Pele

Prayers, chants and offerings at the ahu (altar) at the entrance to a small town preparing to host a very important guest.

My coral heart: bound for love

September 5th was a dear dear friendʻs eighty-first birthday. This venerable lady L and I share a love of discovering heart shaped rocks and pebbles in our paths.

I made a little pin for her with one of the coral hearts washed up on a beach where I like to launch my kayak. The stitching is intentionally rough. The beads and Imfibinga (as I knew them as a child) aka Jobʻs Tears (seeds of the Coix lacryma jobi plant) come from other times and places in my life.

It is curious to me that these seeds which bear the name of a figure who suffered greatly, and which make a perfect ready polished and pierced bead,  crop up repeatedly in my straddling-many-cultures life. They are vested with sacred power for the Zulu people. Cherokee legend has it that Jobʻs Tears sprung up in the footsteps of those who walked the Trail Of Tears in the forced relocation of southeastern native tribespeople in USA.

When I left the old country a dear dear young woman gave me a long string of Imfibinga as a farewell present. My much travelled, well-used (when I lived in cooler climes) Pendleton stetson hat band is made of these seeds.

The whole coral heart pin is less than two inches square. The backing cloth was stained with old coffee.

Making this piece gave me a lovely pool of calm amidst the volcano eruption clamour and chaos of living in a community preparing to host Pele, a notoriously tempestuous and sometimes difficult guest. An appropriate time to be working with Jobʻs Tears.

Note to self: get some Coix lacryma jobi plants for the garden.

Waking up in Paradise: considering the lilies

A month to the day after tropical Storm Iselle, after a soak at a somewhat altered geothermally heated pool, I spent a bit of time in the garden marvelling at the resilience and beauty I found there.

The variegated pink and green Ti plants (Cordyline fruticosa) are flowering with spectacular frothy spears.

Plants just get on with it: repair and heal, grow, bloom, come to fruition and move on. Amazing.

Gone girl!

There has always been a dead Albezia tree in the neighbouring lot to the west. We have built up quite a relationship in the past 18 months.

A pair of ʻIo, Hawaiian hawks (Buteo solitarius), have liked to perch there. Not every day, but certainly at significant times, I hear a piercing whistle, or look up and there they are. When I was unpacking the baggage from the shipping container, ʻIo watched from this tree. When I was printing the curtains for the bedroom, ʻIo watched.  When I planted the first taro, ʻIo was there.

When Lionheart visited in December this dead tree hurled a 17 foot branch at us one night. It narrowly missed the house but did startle me. Lionheart was billeted  in the loft under the roof the time.

A month or so later, another bough from this tree not only took the power out for the whole street, but also trapped me inside for a bit, draping the driveway with live powerlines. HELCO sorted that out in pouring rain, through the dark wee hours of the night. yay! HELCO heroes.

Amazingly this dead tree survived Hurricane Iselle with only a few widowmakers coming down, and thankfully none causing any damage to property or powerlines.

A week or so ago, in the middle of a hot sunny afternoon there was a sound like a rifle shot and another huge bough came crashing down.

Slowly this skyline feature on the western front has been changing shape before my eyes. Bumbees loved the wood for nesting and I was grateful - it took their attention away from my Ohia houseposts.

This Saturday past,  I came home to find that the whole tree on the ground, neatly parallel to our property lines. Thank goodness! I was not home when that happened. It must have shaken the windows and rattled the doors. On the ground, one begins to comprehend the enormity of this trunk.

"Miz K, Iʻm tellinʻ ya, when thaʻ baby came down, she exploded like a cannon shot!" says the nice neighbour lady in her soft Texan accent.

The neighbourhood is a bit safer with that tree hazard gone, even as there is a lot of chainsaw noise in my future. One down, three more giant live ones to go.

 I hope that enough Ohia trees are left standing for the ʻIo to still find comfortable vantage point. I have noticed that the vacant lot clearing is a little indiscriminate. Ohia and Albezias are taken out alike, though some of the Ohia wood is being sold. Being a very hard wood, it makes good construction posts, or firewood for smaller trees.

An important visitor: not their first rodeo

In many parts of the USA, September is Back-to-School month,  and a signal of a different pace of life.

I have been finding myself spending a lot of time in a high school cafeteria this September crowding in along with five to six hundred other local residents.

Twice a week we have Civil Defense community informational lava update meetings in the local high school cafeteria. These meetings are to keep us posted about the Kilauea lava flow from the Puʻu Oʻo vent which has been erupting continuously in one form or another for 31 years. Thatʻs a long time so whatʻs the big deal you might be thinking.

This latest flow, which began on June 27th,  is heading for a collision course for the only town: the sole business, commercial and educational centre in the region. The lava gained ground quickly by moving into old lava tubes and cracks. It is currently threatening houses, infrastructure such as power lines and telephone cables and the main arterial road out of this remote region of the island. Infrastructure, incidentally, which has just been restored after tropical storm Iselle.

The mayor of the island is a veteran of lava flows. His family comes from this region. He grew up in an area of recent inundation. I get the feeling that we are in good hands with this particular Big Daddy and his department heads: this is not their first rodeo.

It might be a bit of a wild ride, this dancing with Pele thing, but the information coming to the community is clear and it seems that all the relevant agencies are standing by to ensure there is the least disruption to life as possible and that people and their stuff stay as safe as possible. In the circumstances.

It is interesting seeing a slow motion disaster develop in a community known to be eclectic, idiosyncratic and pretty unconventional in nature.

As we are tested, so we fund the strength to survive. And thrive.

Or break.

I personally find it very energising having front row seats on the birth of earth. Like any birth, it has its painful and uncomfortable moments. Turtle Islandʻs latest expansion project. In my backyard. Yes!

E! Pele! E! Pele! ka ʻuka ʻulī ana
E Pele e Pele hua`ina hua`ina
E Pele e Pele `oni luna `oni luna
E Pele e Pele `oni lalo `oni lalo
E Pele e Pele a`o kuli pe`e nui

Ha`ina ka inoa no Pele la ea
Eala eala ea, a i e a

He inoa no Pele

Explanation for this chant and an English translation here though I doubt it would ever be chanted in English.

Note: when attended this meeting and took these pictures, I swear there was no honu (Hawaiian green sea turtle) spreading her fins to embrace the mayor as he spoke. Magic.

Shovelling it

The first weekend in September in the USA is always a 3 day holiday weekend. It is called Labour Day but they spell it funny and usually marks the end of summer on continental USA. Labour day is sometimes celebrated with traditional picnics and family gatherings.

Labour Day is also a holiday where I live but the seasons are relative terms in a two season climate: hot and wet and a smidgen less hot but wetter best describe summer and winter here.

The holiday Monday dawned hot and sunny with nary a cloud in the skies (unusual for a rainforest climate zone). I decided that it was time to fetch another truckload of horse manure for the always ongoing garden soil creation project.

Thus I spent Labour day shovelling the proverbial. And very content I was with that too. Horse manure shovels much easier dry than in the pouring rain as when last the Lionheart and I fetched a load.

On labour Day, I also harvested the first of the bananas which survived the ferocity of tropical storm Iselle.

It was such a heavy bunch that it took all the strength in my paddle arms not to let it smash to the ground as I cut and carried it inside. These bananas gained 23 extra days of ripening on the stalk. I am so proud of them for surviving the storm. I am also very glad that I resisted the panic urge to cut them young in a frenzy of storm preparation.

I counted more than 125 bananas on this bunch. About a third will be eaten fresh, half dehydrated and the remainder frozen for breakfast smoothies and icecream.

The sun also rises

In case anyone wondered. yes, I do still paddle.

Not as much as I would like to but, no, I have not abandoned the Way of the Paddle. At dawn. Beneath a volcano. The sun also rises.

Whereʻs Waldo

Some of my friends have expressed concern about my proximity to the lava flow set to inundate a remote little village on a tiny island which looks like a seagull splat in a big big ocean, possibly by September 24-26.

PLEASE do not worry. I am in no danger right now.

The biggest potential issue for me in the immediate days and weeks is air quality.

Volcanic emissions (toxic gases like hydrogen sulphide and others) could pollute my water catchment system. I have a contingency plan (disconnect the water catchment system) and a lot of stored water to satisfy my needs.  I am way better off than folks down the blue line from that leading edge. Follow the blue arrow in this map.

The blue lines are digitally created maps of where there would be rivers/valleys IF the rainwater didnʻt just percolate immediately into the lava rock. We have no rivers in this region. We all, in this area,  live on the youngest earth in the world. The active volcano Kilauea is beneath us, creating land as shield volcanoes do.

Lava is a liquid and behaves just like any other liquid when it is not erupting under pressure. It follows the path of least resistance. It flows downslope. It is a liquid which just happens to be a bit hot: at between 700 and 1,200 ℃ it has a tendency to burn everything in its path.

Of course thereʻs the small matter of that I have been working in the little town at a site potentially the other side of where the lava could cut the arterial road - the solid black line on the map and the only road into or out of the region. It is a substitute job so the institution has no obligation to me if the place of work has to close. I am not concerned. It just means I will be available for volunteer opportunities if I do not have paid work. The county has already begun work on opening up alternate routes.

I have bananas and sweet potatoes enough to feed a small African nation right now. Water, food, shelter and a robust, healthy body. I have what one needs for life. In abundance.  I am grateful.

For more information and the Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory centreʻs daily eruption updates, maps and photos and lots of interesting data and statistics go here. This particular Kilauea eruption comes from the Puʻu Oʻo vent and is currently called the June 27th flow, because that is the day it began.