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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Power of Pele [PhotoTravel]

I've visited the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park before, but the encounter with the massive scale and awesome power of the thing remains as great. For my stop-over this trip I promised myself I was going to go to the lava flows. The first day the park was 'closed' due to vog (smog made by volcanic gasses), but Monday I was able to drive down in the morning and see where Kilauea and Pu'u O'o are feeding lava into the sea - a huge plume of steam, glass dust and acid is constantly streaming into the air from the cyan-blue ocean at the end of each lava tube where 2000° lava instantly turns seawater to plasma. There were three plumes visible Monday - indeed, the marked track must have crossed two of the lava tubes, an unsettling thought.

It's almost too huge, like the way that the Grand Canyon only truly sinks in for me when I shut my eyes and consider the scale of what I am seeing. The power is unmistakeable though - the end of the Chain of Craters road shows where the lava has just ploughed through regardless. It's easy to understand why the polynesian culture was willing to go to the murderous extremes of kapu to try to appease Pele and avoid this - a practice which continued as late as 1819. Even now, the rationalisations of 21st century thought can be humbled by the raw power that surrounds you standing in the heart of an active lava flow area. The heat, the fumes, the new-born rock, the control over ocean and weather - all provide a natural 'total perspective vortex'.

posted at 9:35 AM (UK) | |