An Encounter with Luna
Vancouver Island is huge and very convoluted round the edges. There are only a few places where the rocky terrain allows easy access to the water, with a road to take you there. So we drove for several hours on a wide dirt track, through the endless forests of Douglas fir, to get to Nootka Sound. We’d picked it out on the map, because it looked remote enough that we would be able to get away on our own.
We drew up finally at a small wooden pier, a very small beach and several small houses. One of them was a store, selling mostly fishing equipment and cans of food. Several cars were parked around the area, and a couple of guys were getting ready to take off in a motorboat, their fishing rods sticking out over the stern.
Unloaded the kayaks by the beach, we sorted what we would need for the night: sleeping bags, warm clothes, cooking equipment, some dried and canned food. I had a sit-on-top, a kayak that is very stable but does not keep you dry, so I donned some waterproof clothes, and stashed my luggage in big plastic bags. Jo had rented an ocean kayak, the kind you sit inside, with a skirt that prevents the water coming into the vessel. The first time she’d got into it, she promptly tipped over sideways, but by this time she was used to distributing her weight with care. If either of us capsized, our luggage would get soaked, but the sea is generally very calm around there, because there are countless wandering inlets dotted with islands, intercepting the Pacific Ocean’s waves and swells. It was a sunny day – with any luck the weather would hold out for us.
We were ready to leave, when an older man with white hair and a slight limp wandered down the path. I saw him coming and thought, he’s got something to tell us. He addressed me with a bemused smile, “You going out into the bay to see the orca?”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “I’d love to see an orca, I didn’t know there was one out there. I thought they went around in pods, and stuck to very specific routes.”
“This one’s lost his pod. We just got back from petting him, he’s right out there.” He waved at the bay. “His pod’s gone back to the ocean and they left him here. He’s real friendly!” His tone held a sense of wonder.
“Well, maybe we’ll see her!” We smiled at each other and he departed. Meanwhile Jo had been reading a notice board on the edge of the pier. When she came back, I said, “That guy just told me there is a lone orca out in the bay.”
She nodded. “Yes, there’s a sign about her on that board. Apparently she’s a teenaged female, and they’re hoping the pod will pick her up again when it comes back through the sound. They say you are not to feed her or approach her, they don‘t want her to get used to being with humans.”
“Hmmm!” I grinned. “Well, it would be a treat to see her, anyway. That guy told me he’d been petting her. It was obviously a pretty big experience for him, he’ll be telling his grandkids about it for years to come.”
“Cool! I hope we get to see her. Maybe she will approach us, then we won’t be approaching her!”
We put the kayaks in the water and set off paddling. I always appreciate that feeling of space you get out on the water, it’s such a different perspective from the land. The view was the same – forest covered hills on all sides with stretches of water in between, but somehow the sensation of the water carrying us, and the experience of looking back at land instead of looking out from land gave me a sense of freedom.
A breeze made the clear cold water slightly choppy, but not uncomfortable. We paddled for a couple of hours before we picked out a small uninhabited island with a short stretch of rocky shore where we could beach our kayaks. Once back on land, we went exploring. As I jumped from rock to rock along the edge of the water, I noticed large colonies of some kind of shellfish attached to the rock surface in the intertidal zone. They were shapeless and stone colored, very firmly attached to the rock. I called Jo over to see if she could identify them, and she said immediately, with a smile, “Those are oysters! Do you like oysters?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never had them. How do you get them off the rock?”
She showed me how to prize them off with a knife. We made a fire on the beach with some of the copious downed wood from the forest, to roast them on the coals. As soon as they were hot they automatically opened up so that you could scoop out the jelly like meat. They were an oddly liquid consistency but quite pleasant.
As darkness fell, Jo made a bed for herself in the sand and I lay down on the moss on the forest floor. Although there were a few mosquitoes, I slept well. In the morning we had a quick breakfast of bread and cheese before we set off again just as the sun was peeking through the clouds. We explored the coasts of a few other islands, and paddled along the edge of one shallow sandy beach. “Have you ever collected clams?” Jo asked, looking over the edge of her boat into the water.
“No, have you?”
“Yes, and there seem to be lots of them here. It must be a very low tide, I can see them sticking out of the sand.”
Floating behind her, I could see what she was looking at: there were scores of fat white and brown clam shells, just their tips visible. They were easy to scoop up with our hands, without even getting out of the kayaks. “Do we know for sure they are safe to eat?” I asked.
“Well,” Jo frowned, “I think that in places where there are a lot of people living on the shore, they might be polluted. Here it should be quite safe. Unless there’s a red tide. But I think we would see it if there was a red tide.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s kind of bacteria that stains the water red, and when you get a lot of them they make the shellfish poisonous.”
“Oh!”
She laughed. “Don’t worry about it, I think we would already be sick from eating the oysters if it was going to be a problem!”
“Well, I suppose that’s good, I’m glad you didn’t tell me earlier!”
After filling a couple of bags with clams, we set off again. Because it was Sunday, there were quite a few motorboats in the bay, but it was a large enough area that we weren’t too bothered by the swells or the sounds of engines. Both of us were keeping an eye open for the orca we were meant to avoid, when we noticed a couple of boats stopped in the middle of the bay, a long way from any land. As we paddled towards them to see what was going on, one of them sped away. The other remained, and when we were close enough to be in hearing range we could see the big black and white shape just beneath the water right beside the boat. She was rubbing her big body against the side of the boat, rolling over on her back and standing up on her tail. As we paddled closer, I called over, “I hope you’re not feeding her!”
“Oh no, he just likes the company,” a man in a peaked cap called back. “And we can’t start up our motor to leave because he might be damaged by the propeller. Bang on the side of your kayak, and he’ll come right over to you!”
Without stopping to consider the wisdom of this, I slapped the side of my kayak, and in a couple of seconds, a huge rounded back broke the surface right beside me. She was longer than my kayak. She lay there looking at me with one round black eye.
Hesitantly I reached out to rub her jet-black head. Was this OK? She seemed to like it, and I was delighted to feel her silky smooth skin, thick and almost rubbery. Rolling over on her back, she showed me her white belly, opening her mouth wide. I felt like I could be swallowed whole. It was cavernous, at least two feet across, with a short pink tongue and very neat lines of perfect pyramid teeth, an inch long in the center, getting smaller to either side. “Girl, look at your teeth!” I said, awed. I got the impression she was grinning at me.
Jo called, “I saw a program on TV about them, and it said they like to have their tongues rubbed!”
“I don’t think I want to risk losing my hand, even though you are so friendly,” I told the huge animal. I realized my kayak was moving sideways quite fast — she was leaning on it. As I was wondering if this was cause for concern, she swam underneath me, and I found myself and my boat lifted half out of the water on her huge broad back.
“Hey, baby, you’re gorgeous, but put me down!” I exclaimed in alarm.
“They’ve never been known to attack humans,“ called Jo reassuringly.
“That may be so, but I’d prefer not to be in the water with her!“
Just as the kayak was starting to slide sideways, she dove downwards, dropping me back in the water, and re-surfaced next to Jo, repeating her antics. For a few minutes she swam to and fro playing with each of us in turn. We had plenty of time to examine her: the round dimple on top her head which was her blowhole, the wide black tail that could probably knock our kayaks out of the water, the discolored indentations on her back where she had been hit by something - propellers? Clearly she was enjoying our interest in her. But she was getting more and more bumptious, picking us up and rubbing against us. In spite of her apparently playful intentions, she would capsize one or both of us sooner or later. How were we going to get away from her?
The first motorboat had quickly departed as soon as she’d left them, but now another one stopped nearby. I called over to tell them to slap the side of their boat, and again, she responded to the call immediately. She was obviously lonely, and people were probably the only beings in the bay who were prepared to hang out with her. Fish and seals were potential prey who would make themselves as scarce as they could when she was around.
The moment she left us, we took off towards the nearest shore, paddling as fast as we could. She caught up with us after we had gone a few hundred yards, and swam alongside, leaping in and out of the water in perfect sine waves, with such joyful carefree elegance and effortless ease that I felt quite jealous. When we got closer to the shore, she departed to show off to some other tourists.
In spite of the danger of having a large animal being so friendly, Jo and I were grinning from ear to ear for hours afterwards. There was something very special about being so close to such a delightful character, in such a very different physical form. I understood the bemused expression of the man who had approached me before we set off. It was the kind of encounter you never forgot.
This orca, nicknamed Luna, became very well known in Nootka Sound over the next year or so. “She” turned out to be wrongly labelled female, though the name stuck. His complete lack of fear around humans caused various problems, since he quite often disabled boats, and nearly sank a couple. Of course this ignited a fierce debate over what should be done about him. Finally, the problem was solved when he was killed by the propeller of a big boat. Many mourned and some were relieved, but no one who had been in contact with him was left unmoved.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Hawaii - Pele's Blood
Pele’s Blood
I arrived at Volcano National Park late in the afternoon, and went straight to the Visitor Center. There I consulted a tired looking ranger about the status of the volcano. “I understand there is no flow right now, is that correct?”
“We just heard from the rangers on the coast, that volcanic activity is visible.”
I grinned with delight. “Oh, really? Cool! Thank you, Pele! So I can drive down and see it now? How far is the coast?”
She smiled at my obvious pleasure. “It’s a half hour drive, just follow the road south.”
“Thank you!” I turned to go, then turned back to say, “You look like you need to go to bed!”
She nodded and sighed. “All my allergies are playing up because of the sulfur and other chemicals in the air. I get off work soon, and then I am going to bed.”
I followed the winding road that took me down to sea level. A big lava flow in 1982 covered several miles of the road, so that it’s no longer possible to drive far along the coastline. At the point where the road disappeared abruptly under a thick layer of lava, I found a temporary ranger station. About twenty cars were parked there, full of people who had come down to see the glow of the red lava in the dark. The rangers had telescopes sighted onto the flow, which was probably about a mile away as the crow flies, over piles of cold black rock that extended a long way up the hill. The active flow seemed small -- just a couple of patches and one streak of red. Although dusk was falling, there was still enough daylight that it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. A couple of people were walking out on the cold lava in the direction of the red flow, and I decided to follow them to see if I could get a better view.
There are two quite different kinds of lava in Hawaii. Pahoehoe, which flowed at a higher temperature, is reasonably solid and smooth to walk on, though you certainly have to be careful; a’a’ is piles of loose chunks with very jagged edges, and you never want to try walking on it unless you really have to, because it slides away under your feet. Here, it was pahoehoe, and obviously many people had walked this way already. There were even some red flags, marking a sort of a path.
When I had walked for fifteen minutes or so, carefully negotiating the raw rocks, the red flags were history. I stopped and sat on a flat piece of lava to watch with my binoculars. Then I could see that the flow was changing all the time -- of course, it's flowing! It still looked small; clearly my chances of getting close to it that night were nil. I was about to go back when a couple with a kid came walking by.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes, it certainly is! I’m so glad the flow started up so we could see it.” The guy had a reverential tone to his voice.
”Yes, we were lucky. Are you going further?” I asked.
“Well, it’s pretty tricky going but I think we’ll try to get closer,” the woman replied with a friendly smile.
“I don’t have a flashlight so I think I’d better get back before I can’t see anything underfoot.”
“Oh, we have a couple of flashlights, come with us!”
That’s exactly what you were meant to say. “Thanks, that would be great!”
The four of us walked a considerable way further, until it was quite dark, and we could see a number of glowing streaks ahead of us. The source of the flow still seemed a long way off but the going was getting really hard, so we agreed it was time to turn back. By that time I knew my companions as Peter, Maria, and Robert from Philadelphia. Peter took a bunch of photos, lying down on the lava, and promised to email them to me. A big red glow was visible over the mountains to the left of the flow. That was apparently the source of the vent that was producing the lava we were seeing, which meant that it had flowed underground a long way before it surfaced where we could see it.
“Damn, this is so incredible to see molten lava like this, I wish we could get closer,” said Peter regretfully, as he stood up and put his camera away.
“I think I’ll walk out tomorrow in daylight,” I said.
“I wish I could do that but we’ve got a flight back to Honolulu.” He sounded distinctly bummed. “You’ll have to buy a camera and send us pictures!”
I could sympathize with his frustration – this was certainly one of the most incredible sights I had ever seen.
When we turned around, the lights of the ranger station showed us what direction to take. We saw a couple of flashlights behind us – people who had obviously been much closer to the flow. I was glad we hadn’t gone further - once it got properly dark, you really had to concentrate where you put your feet. The mounds of lava are so irregular, so unpredictably piled and so varied in height -- gently sloping, or stark and sheer up to twelve feet high, or more, off the average floor, which is very far from level anyway -- and there is often a thin layer of loose shale that flakes off when you step on it, so you can easily slip. Edges of big flat plates are often sticking up, where they have been pushed by a second (or third or fourth or fifth or sixth) flow of lava that came from underneath. The lava sometimes contains air bubbles, which may give way under your weight. Usually such air pockets are only a couple of inches but they can be as much as several feet deep. Most treacherous of all are the many fissures, some only an inch or two wide, others gaping open a couple of feet wide, and several feet deep.
In spite of all this, we reached the ranger station safely, except that I was wearing my sandals, so I scraped up my toes on a sharp edge here and there. I hate wearing enclosed shoes in hot weather, but this looked like a situation where it was necessary
I said goodbye to the Philadelphians, and drove back up the hill to the only campsite in the park, way along a remote road. A soft rain fell throughout the night, and the morning was foggy. I put on my good shoes, long pants, and a sweatshirt, and drove down to sea level, stopping once to walk to edge of the ocean. The lava has formed a steep cliff, twenty or more feet high all along that stretch of coast. I’d read that two tourists were killed when the cliff they were standing on collapsed into the water. Another potential danger is sudden eruptions of lava into the ocean below the surface, causing spouts of very hot water and lava to shoot up in the air. A person wouldn’t want to be in the way. Nevertheless, it was very beautiful, watching the water throwing up clouds of brilliantly white yet ethereal spray, as waves hit the cliff.
It wasn't raining at the coast, but plenty of wind and cloud made it pleasantly cool. Since I couldn't see last night's flow, I just set off in the general direction. No one was around, although several helicopters and planes flew overhead as I was hiking. You can take helicopter trips to see the lava lake which is the vent – the source of the red glow I’d seen the night before - but if the cloud is thick you don’t see anything at all. A rich person's gamble.
The lava became more irregular and more treacherous the further I walked. I had to traverse some areas of a'a', walking on lumps of cinder as big as your fist, piled many feet deep, crumbling and shifting under me. I really didn’t relish the idea of falling, since if I caught myself with my hands, my skin would get very scraped up. I managed to stay upright most of the time, although there was one spot where I crawled on all fours. In a few places the lava surface gave way an inch or two as I put my weight on it, and I encountered one area, about twenty feet across and twenty feet deep, which had collapsed in on itself. Assuring myself I was very light, I tried to stick to areas where ferns were beginning to poke their green tips through, figuring they were older flows that might have stabilized. I headed for a swathe of trees where the lava had parted, at the peak of the long slope that led down to the ocean. Once I got to the top of the hill, maybe I would see the vent itself, from which the flow originated.
Three hours and a lot of sweat later, I had to acknowledge that the vent was a long way off. The sea of cold lava stretched endlessly away in the distance, punctuated only by a few groups of sad looking trees. I passed a place where a tree trunk lay along the rock, burnt off at one end, and then I found the tubular hole where it had once stood, about fifteen feet deep.
I decided to give up on the vent, and make my way back to the ranger station. There are no landmarks on the lava, of course, and I was very grateful to be able to see the coast so I could get my bearings. Then, as I retraced my steps, I spied a place below me where steam poured out of the rock, sweeping away in the wind. Hmm, that has potential! I headed towards it. Here were many signs of recent flows, where new lava had surfaced, forming long fingers like lengthening turds, varying in width from two feet to an inch, ending in tight whorls as the flow slowed and cooled, like glue. In places, these whorls were like thick strands of rope; sometimes they were heaped on top of each other, sometimes they were tall, like piles of cloth that should be hanging down but were sticking up instead. In other spots, I could see where the hot lava had thrust its way through the cold lava, pushing it apart, then filling up cracks and holes in the previous flow.
As it ages, the lava seems to settle into a dull blackish color, but when it’s new, the colors are incredible: the edges of the new flows are often iridescent blue, with hints of rainbows. The ends of the smaller fingers are quite weak, pocked with air, easily broken off, and quite stunningly iridescent inside. The surface of the smoother parts is often marked with a kind of white-ish discharge, shaped like the segments on the back of a turtle.
I kept feeling the rock as I was walking to see if any of it was hot, but it all just seemed a little warm from the nonexistent sun. Then I noticed a small red patch a couple of hundred yards to my left: was this really the active flow? I pulled out my binoculars to check it out, but it looked just as though someone had made a red mark on the rock. Then suddenly I realized there were other glowing cracks developing around it. This really was it!
I made my way as close as I dared, about a hundred feet away, and settled down with the binoculars. My elation was mixed with some severe anxiety, but I reassured myself: none of it is moving faster than I can run. Now I could hear the rocks quietly crackling, and I could smell the heat. After a particularly loud crack, I got a great view of red lava pouring from a gaping red hole, streaming down between the existing black rocks. As it started to cool, a grayish crust formed on top, though it stayed red round the outer edges for several yards, then began to slow and pile up in great bulging ribbons, like candle wax, or piles of thick carpet. A single bright red drop, moving faster than the lava underneath, made its way a few feet over the top from the point where the flow began. More red cracks revealed themselves, and grew, in spots up and down in front of me, dying back, and then reviving further down.
This is so incredible, to see molten rock flowing, I am so lucky, thank you, Pele, thank you so much! Satisfied at last, I set off downhill to safety. Then I realized that I was walking right into more hot stuff - I could feel the heat radiating upwards, steam started pouring out in a couple of places in front of me, and a few glowing red spots appeared within fifty feet. Was the ground going to collapse and plunge me into a red-hot crevasse? I increased my speed and took off in a different direction, although that meant I was moving across a'a'. Looking back, I could see the air shimmering with heat in a swathe at least a hundred feet wide, and I could still feel it swirling around me in the wind.
Then I noticed a couple of people -- the first I had seen that day -- carrying tall walking sticks, moving up towards the heat. Thinking I should warn them, I shouted and waved. But they couldn’t hear what I was saying, and walked right over the flow between us to get to me, which wasn’t my intention at all. When they were close enough to hear me, I said, “I was just trying to warn you that the flow is right where you just walked!”
The guy grinned broadly and said, “Oh, we walked right into it way back there!” He waved his stick at the flow. “It’s incredible, these red gaps opening up everywhere, all over the place, all around us!”
He was like an excited schoolboy, barely able to string his sentences together. The woman made more sense, when he wasn’t interrupting her.
“We’d been walking a while,” she said, “and we were about to give up when we saw something red.”
“We thought at first that it was man-made paint of some kind!” he interjected gleefully.
“Yes, that’s what I thought when I first saw the rock glowing,” I said, amused that we’d all had the same initial reaction.
“Well, then we realized it was red-hot rock.”
“It was a skylight, just right there in front of us!”
He used the term ‘skylight’ several times and I gathered it must be a term for an upwelling of lava before it bursts.
The woman continued. “We actually got about twenty feet from it, and walked past it to see if there was any more, when it suddenly bubbled up and burst open, releasing three lava flows. We started taking photos and got quite blasé.”
“One of the flows was only six feet away, and I reached across with my walking stick and poked the end into the red hot rock.”
“Well, what happened when you did that?” I asked. The woman answered my question while he carried on ranting about skylights.
“It formed a little depression that flamed up slightly when he took his stick out, and then it closed over slowly, like molten wax.”
So much for me warning them not to get near the flow! I would have been terrified to be that close, but it was great to talk to someone else who had taken the risk. We walked back to the ranger station, where various tourists, less foolhardy than us, gathered to hear our stories.
“Is it safe to be that close to the lava?” asked one woman doubtfully after we had boasted of our adventures.
“I don’t know, you better ask him,” I laughed, pointing at a ranger standing nearby.
He smiled, and shrugged. “Well, we don’t encourage it. Who knows how thick the crust is? You can never tell when you might fall through. But lots of people go out there, and most of them come back! This volcano is known as the most user-friendly in the world, because it flows so slowly.”
Back at my car, I sank thankfully into the driver’s seat. My little legs felt very weak after that long trek on such rough terrain. I would take it easy for the rest of the afternoon. I was very pleased with the success of my day’s mission: seeing Pele in action, and returning unscarred. In spite of the risk, I knew I would do it again in a hot second – that flowing lava was too hard to imagine, it had to be seen.
I arrived at Volcano National Park late in the afternoon, and went straight to the Visitor Center. There I consulted a tired looking ranger about the status of the volcano. “I understand there is no flow right now, is that correct?”
“We just heard from the rangers on the coast, that volcanic activity is visible.”
I grinned with delight. “Oh, really? Cool! Thank you, Pele! So I can drive down and see it now? How far is the coast?”
She smiled at my obvious pleasure. “It’s a half hour drive, just follow the road south.”
“Thank you!” I turned to go, then turned back to say, “You look like you need to go to bed!”
She nodded and sighed. “All my allergies are playing up because of the sulfur and other chemicals in the air. I get off work soon, and then I am going to bed.”
I followed the winding road that took me down to sea level. A big lava flow in 1982 covered several miles of the road, so that it’s no longer possible to drive far along the coastline. At the point where the road disappeared abruptly under a thick layer of lava, I found a temporary ranger station. About twenty cars were parked there, full of people who had come down to see the glow of the red lava in the dark. The rangers had telescopes sighted onto the flow, which was probably about a mile away as the crow flies, over piles of cold black rock that extended a long way up the hill. The active flow seemed small -- just a couple of patches and one streak of red. Although dusk was falling, there was still enough daylight that it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. A couple of people were walking out on the cold lava in the direction of the red flow, and I decided to follow them to see if I could get a better view.
There are two quite different kinds of lava in Hawaii. Pahoehoe, which flowed at a higher temperature, is reasonably solid and smooth to walk on, though you certainly have to be careful; a’a’ is piles of loose chunks with very jagged edges, and you never want to try walking on it unless you really have to, because it slides away under your feet. Here, it was pahoehoe, and obviously many people had walked this way already. There were even some red flags, marking a sort of a path.
When I had walked for fifteen minutes or so, carefully negotiating the raw rocks, the red flags were history. I stopped and sat on a flat piece of lava to watch with my binoculars. Then I could see that the flow was changing all the time -- of course, it's flowing! It still looked small; clearly my chances of getting close to it that night were nil. I was about to go back when a couple with a kid came walking by.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes, it certainly is! I’m so glad the flow started up so we could see it.” The guy had a reverential tone to his voice.
”Yes, we were lucky. Are you going further?” I asked.
“Well, it’s pretty tricky going but I think we’ll try to get closer,” the woman replied with a friendly smile.
“I don’t have a flashlight so I think I’d better get back before I can’t see anything underfoot.”
“Oh, we have a couple of flashlights, come with us!”
That’s exactly what you were meant to say. “Thanks, that would be great!”
The four of us walked a considerable way further, until it was quite dark, and we could see a number of glowing streaks ahead of us. The source of the flow still seemed a long way off but the going was getting really hard, so we agreed it was time to turn back. By that time I knew my companions as Peter, Maria, and Robert from Philadelphia. Peter took a bunch of photos, lying down on the lava, and promised to email them to me. A big red glow was visible over the mountains to the left of the flow. That was apparently the source of the vent that was producing the lava we were seeing, which meant that it had flowed underground a long way before it surfaced where we could see it.
“Damn, this is so incredible to see molten lava like this, I wish we could get closer,” said Peter regretfully, as he stood up and put his camera away.
“I think I’ll walk out tomorrow in daylight,” I said.
“I wish I could do that but we’ve got a flight back to Honolulu.” He sounded distinctly bummed. “You’ll have to buy a camera and send us pictures!”
I could sympathize with his frustration – this was certainly one of the most incredible sights I had ever seen.
When we turned around, the lights of the ranger station showed us what direction to take. We saw a couple of flashlights behind us – people who had obviously been much closer to the flow. I was glad we hadn’t gone further - once it got properly dark, you really had to concentrate where you put your feet. The mounds of lava are so irregular, so unpredictably piled and so varied in height -- gently sloping, or stark and sheer up to twelve feet high, or more, off the average floor, which is very far from level anyway -- and there is often a thin layer of loose shale that flakes off when you step on it, so you can easily slip. Edges of big flat plates are often sticking up, where they have been pushed by a second (or third or fourth or fifth or sixth) flow of lava that came from underneath. The lava sometimes contains air bubbles, which may give way under your weight. Usually such air pockets are only a couple of inches but they can be as much as several feet deep. Most treacherous of all are the many fissures, some only an inch or two wide, others gaping open a couple of feet wide, and several feet deep.
In spite of all this, we reached the ranger station safely, except that I was wearing my sandals, so I scraped up my toes on a sharp edge here and there. I hate wearing enclosed shoes in hot weather, but this looked like a situation where it was necessary
I said goodbye to the Philadelphians, and drove back up the hill to the only campsite in the park, way along a remote road. A soft rain fell throughout the night, and the morning was foggy. I put on my good shoes, long pants, and a sweatshirt, and drove down to sea level, stopping once to walk to edge of the ocean. The lava has formed a steep cliff, twenty or more feet high all along that stretch of coast. I’d read that two tourists were killed when the cliff they were standing on collapsed into the water. Another potential danger is sudden eruptions of lava into the ocean below the surface, causing spouts of very hot water and lava to shoot up in the air. A person wouldn’t want to be in the way. Nevertheless, it was very beautiful, watching the water throwing up clouds of brilliantly white yet ethereal spray, as waves hit the cliff.
It wasn't raining at the coast, but plenty of wind and cloud made it pleasantly cool. Since I couldn't see last night's flow, I just set off in the general direction. No one was around, although several helicopters and planes flew overhead as I was hiking. You can take helicopter trips to see the lava lake which is the vent – the source of the red glow I’d seen the night before - but if the cloud is thick you don’t see anything at all. A rich person's gamble.
The lava became more irregular and more treacherous the further I walked. I had to traverse some areas of a'a', walking on lumps of cinder as big as your fist, piled many feet deep, crumbling and shifting under me. I really didn’t relish the idea of falling, since if I caught myself with my hands, my skin would get very scraped up. I managed to stay upright most of the time, although there was one spot where I crawled on all fours. In a few places the lava surface gave way an inch or two as I put my weight on it, and I encountered one area, about twenty feet across and twenty feet deep, which had collapsed in on itself. Assuring myself I was very light, I tried to stick to areas where ferns were beginning to poke their green tips through, figuring they were older flows that might have stabilized. I headed for a swathe of trees where the lava had parted, at the peak of the long slope that led down to the ocean. Once I got to the top of the hill, maybe I would see the vent itself, from which the flow originated.
Three hours and a lot of sweat later, I had to acknowledge that the vent was a long way off. The sea of cold lava stretched endlessly away in the distance, punctuated only by a few groups of sad looking trees. I passed a place where a tree trunk lay along the rock, burnt off at one end, and then I found the tubular hole where it had once stood, about fifteen feet deep.
I decided to give up on the vent, and make my way back to the ranger station. There are no landmarks on the lava, of course, and I was very grateful to be able to see the coast so I could get my bearings. Then, as I retraced my steps, I spied a place below me where steam poured out of the rock, sweeping away in the wind. Hmm, that has potential! I headed towards it. Here were many signs of recent flows, where new lava had surfaced, forming long fingers like lengthening turds, varying in width from two feet to an inch, ending in tight whorls as the flow slowed and cooled, like glue. In places, these whorls were like thick strands of rope; sometimes they were heaped on top of each other, sometimes they were tall, like piles of cloth that should be hanging down but were sticking up instead. In other spots, I could see where the hot lava had thrust its way through the cold lava, pushing it apart, then filling up cracks and holes in the previous flow.
As it ages, the lava seems to settle into a dull blackish color, but when it’s new, the colors are incredible: the edges of the new flows are often iridescent blue, with hints of rainbows. The ends of the smaller fingers are quite weak, pocked with air, easily broken off, and quite stunningly iridescent inside. The surface of the smoother parts is often marked with a kind of white-ish discharge, shaped like the segments on the back of a turtle.
I kept feeling the rock as I was walking to see if any of it was hot, but it all just seemed a little warm from the nonexistent sun. Then I noticed a small red patch a couple of hundred yards to my left: was this really the active flow? I pulled out my binoculars to check it out, but it looked just as though someone had made a red mark on the rock. Then suddenly I realized there were other glowing cracks developing around it. This really was it!
I made my way as close as I dared, about a hundred feet away, and settled down with the binoculars. My elation was mixed with some severe anxiety, but I reassured myself: none of it is moving faster than I can run. Now I could hear the rocks quietly crackling, and I could smell the heat. After a particularly loud crack, I got a great view of red lava pouring from a gaping red hole, streaming down between the existing black rocks. As it started to cool, a grayish crust formed on top, though it stayed red round the outer edges for several yards, then began to slow and pile up in great bulging ribbons, like candle wax, or piles of thick carpet. A single bright red drop, moving faster than the lava underneath, made its way a few feet over the top from the point where the flow began. More red cracks revealed themselves, and grew, in spots up and down in front of me, dying back, and then reviving further down.
This is so incredible, to see molten rock flowing, I am so lucky, thank you, Pele, thank you so much! Satisfied at last, I set off downhill to safety. Then I realized that I was walking right into more hot stuff - I could feel the heat radiating upwards, steam started pouring out in a couple of places in front of me, and a few glowing red spots appeared within fifty feet. Was the ground going to collapse and plunge me into a red-hot crevasse? I increased my speed and took off in a different direction, although that meant I was moving across a'a'. Looking back, I could see the air shimmering with heat in a swathe at least a hundred feet wide, and I could still feel it swirling around me in the wind.
Then I noticed a couple of people -- the first I had seen that day -- carrying tall walking sticks, moving up towards the heat. Thinking I should warn them, I shouted and waved. But they couldn’t hear what I was saying, and walked right over the flow between us to get to me, which wasn’t my intention at all. When they were close enough to hear me, I said, “I was just trying to warn you that the flow is right where you just walked!”
The guy grinned broadly and said, “Oh, we walked right into it way back there!” He waved his stick at the flow. “It’s incredible, these red gaps opening up everywhere, all over the place, all around us!”
He was like an excited schoolboy, barely able to string his sentences together. The woman made more sense, when he wasn’t interrupting her.
“We’d been walking a while,” she said, “and we were about to give up when we saw something red.”
“We thought at first that it was man-made paint of some kind!” he interjected gleefully.
“Yes, that’s what I thought when I first saw the rock glowing,” I said, amused that we’d all had the same initial reaction.
“Well, then we realized it was red-hot rock.”
“It was a skylight, just right there in front of us!”
He used the term ‘skylight’ several times and I gathered it must be a term for an upwelling of lava before it bursts.
The woman continued. “We actually got about twenty feet from it, and walked past it to see if there was any more, when it suddenly bubbled up and burst open, releasing three lava flows. We started taking photos and got quite blasé.”
“One of the flows was only six feet away, and I reached across with my walking stick and poked the end into the red hot rock.”
“Well, what happened when you did that?” I asked. The woman answered my question while he carried on ranting about skylights.
“It formed a little depression that flamed up slightly when he took his stick out, and then it closed over slowly, like molten wax.”
So much for me warning them not to get near the flow! I would have been terrified to be that close, but it was great to talk to someone else who had taken the risk. We walked back to the ranger station, where various tourists, less foolhardy than us, gathered to hear our stories.
“Is it safe to be that close to the lava?” asked one woman doubtfully after we had boasted of our adventures.
“I don’t know, you better ask him,” I laughed, pointing at a ranger standing nearby.
He smiled, and shrugged. “Well, we don’t encourage it. Who knows how thick the crust is? You can never tell when you might fall through. But lots of people go out there, and most of them come back! This volcano is known as the most user-friendly in the world, because it flows so slowly.”
Back at my car, I sank thankfully into the driver’s seat. My little legs felt very weak after that long trek on such rough terrain. I would take it easy for the rest of the afternoon. I was very pleased with the success of my day’s mission: seeing Pele in action, and returning unscarred. In spite of the risk, I knew I would do it again in a hot second – that flowing lava was too hard to imagine, it had to be seen.
A Sticky Predicament - Brazil
A Sticky Predicament
I’d heard that Brazilian roads are bad, but no one actually used the words nightmarish, or horrendous, or terrifying, so I assumed they were just - bad. I’d been on bad roads, that was do-able. I also assumed that the roads marked on the map as thick red lines would be better than the thinner red lines. I soon found out that the size of the line had no bearing on how many potholes there were, or how deep the potholes were. The thick red lines had more traffic, and specifically more trucks, which generally meant the potholes were really deep. In Brazil, no matter what the traffic rules might be in writing, the law is: if I’m bigger than you, get out of the damn way. There isn’t much of a concept that traffic coming one way is on one side of the road, and traffic coming the other way is on the other side; it’s more like everyone just zigzags around the road trying to avoid the holes. I was willing – or should I say happy - to get out of the way of the trucks when I could, but at times the road was so strewn with potholes, that it was hard to get out of the way quickly enough. They weren’t just regular potholes, some of them were bottomless pits. I saw more than one car that had been thrown off the road as a result of hitting one at speed. I quite often stopped and reversed when I came to a whole slew of them littered over the highway. The locals drove off the tarred road onto the dirt at the side, for long stretches. It was safer.
There was no way of telling what the road was like until I was on it. I did drive one or two roads that had been recently tarred, with not a pothole to be seen for miles. The truck drivers still hogged the middle of the road – I guess they were just used to it. And I was still nervous that I might come upon a stretch of potholes without any warning, which certainly did happen.
Generally speaking, signposts in Brazil don’t exist – if you don’t already know your way, then you develop your psychic abilities very quickly, get lost a lot and ask the way often. The worst hazard was the roadworks, where guesswork might be fatal. Brazilians are renowned for taking a long time to get things done. Frequently the roadworks had obviously been going on for so long that the road users had just absorbed them; they were part of what that road was like, they weren’t a temporary alteration. So people just knew that you went this side of that red cone when you wanted to get to Sao Roque, and that side when you wanted to get to Belo Horizonte. They knew that these two lanes were for traffic in both directions. They knew that this piece of the road dead-ended abruptly. They knew which way cars would be coming between this line of cones. I didn’t.
In the end I got quite blasé about the driving conditions. I couldn’t afford to drive at the slow speed that would have made it a slightly safer experience, because I would never have got anywhere, and the state of tension that driving produced would have been more protracted. So I drove at medium to high speed when I thought it might be OK, and consequently got it over with faster. Since the worst accidents I saw – cars completely squashed or sheered in half by trucks - were near cities, where there were often roadworks, I stayed away from cities as much as possible. When I did have to negotiate roadworks, I prayed. I often prayed. I sang and prayed, and showered gratitude upon my guardian angels as I drove. In two months I did 3,000 dollars worth of damage to two of my four of the small sedans I rented - chipped windshields, broken mountings, murdered shock absorbers, dents and scratches - but I had no accidents.
After three weeks of driving around the state of Minas Gerais, I thought I had seen the worst of the roads. I was on my way to town of Sao Roque de Minas, near the National Park of Serra da Canastra, and taking a tarred road would have involved driving an extra two hundred kilometers, without any guarantee that it would be an easier drive. So I took a dirt road, not knowing that there had been ten inches of rain in the previous week.
Early on, I came to a T-junction, with no signpost, of course, so I stopped to ponder my options. A man drove by in a pickup, and I waved him down. My Portuguese is pretty poor, but he told me which way to go, and I gathered from what he was saying that there was a very tricky spot ahead, where I should stay to one side.
Sure enough, I came over a small rise and there was a sea of mud ahead of me. It was flat though, and consequently I didn’t take it very seriously, and didn’t gun it quite as much as I should have. Five yards from the end of it, my little VW slowed down and slid sideways, the wheels spinning ineffectively.
I got out to survey the problem. Many times I have dug my way out of mud, but here there was nothing to dig: the surface of the mud was so slick that the wheels were just spinning on top of it. I decided that I needed to wait for someone to push. Bemoaning the fact that I could not push and drive at the same time, I pulled out my little stove and made a cup of tea while I waited for the necessary ‘someone’ to arrive. Since I’m Scottish, tea always calms me down when I’m distressed. There didn’t seem any real reason to worry - this was an agricultural area, and I could see a tractor and house in the near distance. Help was not far away if it didn’t soon transpire right here. My principal concern was that this mud might recur further along the road. Perhaps the sensible thing would be to turn round (when help arrived), and take the tarred road. But how could I know?
As I sat on the verge drinking my tea, a car appeared at the other end of the mud. There was no way the driver could be sure of getting around my car, so I assumed he would stop there and come walking over to check out the situation. I was wrong. After a brief pause he drove on, slipping and sliding to and fro but moving steadily forward. My car was right in his path. I held my breath as he closed in, anticipating that agonizing screech of metal scraping on metal. Surely he would have to stop. No. Somehow he managed to get by, inches between the two vehicles. He reached the end of the mud and picked up speed, soon disappearing round a corner.
I stared after him in annoyed disbelief. How could he fail to help? Did he think I had stopped here for fun? Damn Brazilians, they are so like that, either very helpful or completely callous. Then I thought, if he can do it, so can I. The tires were completely covered in a thick layer of mud, which I removed with a screwdriver. I started up the car, and gunned it. She picked up a little traction. We inched forward. A huge flock of cackling green parrots flew overhead. The car got a grip. We shot off again, onto the hardpack.
With this success under my belt, I certainly wasn’t turning back. I drove on a few miles. At the next bad spot, on a hill, where another car was stuck, without any sign of its owner in the vicinity, my little vehicle made it almost all the way up until she slowed down and stalled. The thick red mud was as slick as any I had ever come across, and I slid onto my butt several times when I got out of the car. Taking my shoes off enabled me to get a better grip with my toes. Since the mud clung to everything it touched, I was already covered with mud from head to toe, and a little more on my feet made no odds. I could see that the tires would have a grip a little further over to the left. I dug a pathway for the car, with my hands, since I had no shovel, and we managed to inch sideways. Once again her tires grabbed, like they were meant to, and we reached the top. Grinning, I patted the dash. Good for you girl, you can do it.
But the terrain was getting hillier. As I slid down one steep hill, narrowly avoiding the huge troughs that had been created by a much bigger vehicle than me, I thought, this puts paid to any chance I had of returning this way, I’d never get back up this hill.
The grass in the fields beside the road was very green and lush; the black and white milking cows were quite presentable, certainly fatter than any I had seen in Brazil so far. I noticed splashes of milk spilt on the road in a couple of places where I stopped. It must be hell getting the milk to town when it rains like this, but if they can get in and out, so can I. Then I looked at my little rental car, and wasn’t so sure. A pickup passed me going the other way, which was reassuring, although I reminded myself that it was a four wheel drive, with much higher clearance than me. Still, some of these small cars have very good traction, and we’ve done very well so far.
I slid down a particularly steep hill to a bridge over a fast flowing muddy river, where a big truck was parked, or stuck, at the side of the road. The driver standing beside it waved me down for a brief conversation. I figured out he was asking me if I had come all the way from the last town. When I said yes, he looked impressed. I asked if this was the road to Sao Roque de Minas, and he gave me the thumbs up. I carried on, negotiating two more tricky uphills, by patrolling them first on foot to see which side of the road looked easiest, and then taking them as fast as I could. The downhills were terrifying since I felt like I had no control, and, indeed, I probably didn’t, since the car would simply slide until she hit a big ridge of mud that stopped her. Finally I got stuck on an uphill where the existing ruts were so slimy and deep, that my little car was saddled on her belly. I considered going to a farm nearby for a shovel to dig myself a pathway, but even if I did manage to dig myself out, how many more hills were like this? I figured I had at least another ten kilometers to go.
Since it was only three thirty in the afternoon, there was a good chance that someone would come by, although I had seen no vehicles going this direction so far. I made another cup of tea, attempting to reassure myself as I waited: I had everything I needed in the car; this wasn’t a bad place to spend the night, with beautiful green folded hills and ridges all around. I constantly imagined I heard vehicles, which kept me on edge, though I probably wouldn’t have had much luck relaxing anyway; my brain was too busy going over possible solutions to my predicament. An hour or so passed before I heard a vehicle that really was coming my way.
It turned out to be a truck with chains on its tires, towing another truck, which was swinging all over the slick surface. The little convoy inched up towards me at about two miles an hour, engines roaring. I stood on tenterhooks by the side of the road, not sure whether to worry most about the possibility that they would not help, or the likelihood that the second vehicle, which appeared to be quite out of control, would smash sideways into my car. I prayed busily, promising that I would never again risk a road like this, almost closing my eyes to avoid seeing the inevitable, and then the driver somehow managed to swing the other way at exactly the right moment. I waved at the driver of the first vehicle, who nodded and waved in return, so I knew he was going to come back for me when he could stop. He’s one of the helpful Brazilians, I am so lucky.
I walked up to meet them at the top of the hill, where they stopped to unhook the towed vehicle, which then set off on its own, leaving the one with chains. In Brazil people are always traveling in the beds of trucks, and a whole gang of women, kids and a couple of guys were standing up in the back of this one, laughing and joking. They eyed me up with puzzled expressions, trying unsuccessfully to pigeonhole this very dirty gray-haired person with tattoos and no shoes, who was traveling alone. I rattled off a few sentences in my bad Portuguese, but what I needed was obvious. The driver, a small man with a sweet smile, backed down to my car, and one of his (male) passengers tied the rope underneath. I started her up and off we went, no problem. At the top we undid the rope and I offered him money along with profuse thanks, but he pointed ahead, saying, “Hasta Sao Roque,” which I took to mean we hadn’t reached safety yet, and he wasn’t going to abandon me. I didn’t try to remonstrate.
We set off again. I slid down a hill behind him, and put my foot on the accelerator to make the corresponding uphill, but didn’t manage it. He backed down again to tow me, and from then on, he kept me in tow. On one hill, even he started losing traction, and as his chained tires spun, they flung up mud, spattering my windshield. I winced at that clicking sound that small stones make when they hit glass. At the top of the hill, we had to stop and clear a space for me to see through. In this way we went about five kilometers, until the road flattened out a little, and ceased to be so deeply rutted. I was greatly relieved not to be towed any more, since the rope was short, which downhills alarming, since sliding into the truck in front was a very real fear.
I followed him, at a safe distance, to a small gas station which was clearly the edge of the town. All his passengers dismounted here to go their own way. Again, I tried to pay him, but he shook his head and asked me if I wanted to go to a hotel. Then he took me to a posada round the corner. Two big jeeps with huge tires were parked outside. He pointed at them and then at me with a laugh, clearly saying, this is what you need. I agreed heartily. He still refused my money, which was a surprise. Brazilians are a strange mixture: some see foreign travelers only as a useful source of cash; others, who have met very few foreigners, see them as weird oddities, not quite human; and yet others, like my rescuer, want to help them. Perhaps it was my obvious plight that made him feel so generous, but the fact that he didn’t use it as an excuse to demand money set him apart from many of his countrymen.
He left me in the care of a shorthaired older woman with a sweet smile. She burst out laughing, throwing her hands in the air, when she saw me all covered in mud, and then was clearly impressed when he explained how I got that way. She showed me to a small room, and I got immediately in the shower, peeling off my clothes under the flow of water. I never did get them completely clean, but I successfully rinsed the mud off my skin. As soon as I was presentable, I walked a couple of blocks up the cobbled street till I found a place that served food, where I ordered a hamburger with all the works. I wolfed it down with gusto. As I ate, a ten minute torrential downpour left the streets pouring with water. I considered my luck, and talked to myself sternly: Really, Mikaya, you need to be more careful, you’re always getting yourself into trouble because you don’t consider things before you do them.
Of its own volition, another voice inside responded: Yes, but you’re fine now, aren’t you? Help always arrives when you need it. And wasn’t it exciting?
I’d heard that Brazilian roads are bad, but no one actually used the words nightmarish, or horrendous, or terrifying, so I assumed they were just - bad. I’d been on bad roads, that was do-able. I also assumed that the roads marked on the map as thick red lines would be better than the thinner red lines. I soon found out that the size of the line had no bearing on how many potholes there were, or how deep the potholes were. The thick red lines had more traffic, and specifically more trucks, which generally meant the potholes were really deep. In Brazil, no matter what the traffic rules might be in writing, the law is: if I’m bigger than you, get out of the damn way. There isn’t much of a concept that traffic coming one way is on one side of the road, and traffic coming the other way is on the other side; it’s more like everyone just zigzags around the road trying to avoid the holes. I was willing – or should I say happy - to get out of the way of the trucks when I could, but at times the road was so strewn with potholes, that it was hard to get out of the way quickly enough. They weren’t just regular potholes, some of them were bottomless pits. I saw more than one car that had been thrown off the road as a result of hitting one at speed. I quite often stopped and reversed when I came to a whole slew of them littered over the highway. The locals drove off the tarred road onto the dirt at the side, for long stretches. It was safer.
There was no way of telling what the road was like until I was on it. I did drive one or two roads that had been recently tarred, with not a pothole to be seen for miles. The truck drivers still hogged the middle of the road – I guess they were just used to it. And I was still nervous that I might come upon a stretch of potholes without any warning, which certainly did happen.
Generally speaking, signposts in Brazil don’t exist – if you don’t already know your way, then you develop your psychic abilities very quickly, get lost a lot and ask the way often. The worst hazard was the roadworks, where guesswork might be fatal. Brazilians are renowned for taking a long time to get things done. Frequently the roadworks had obviously been going on for so long that the road users had just absorbed them; they were part of what that road was like, they weren’t a temporary alteration. So people just knew that you went this side of that red cone when you wanted to get to Sao Roque, and that side when you wanted to get to Belo Horizonte. They knew that these two lanes were for traffic in both directions. They knew that this piece of the road dead-ended abruptly. They knew which way cars would be coming between this line of cones. I didn’t.
In the end I got quite blasé about the driving conditions. I couldn’t afford to drive at the slow speed that would have made it a slightly safer experience, because I would never have got anywhere, and the state of tension that driving produced would have been more protracted. So I drove at medium to high speed when I thought it might be OK, and consequently got it over with faster. Since the worst accidents I saw – cars completely squashed or sheered in half by trucks - were near cities, where there were often roadworks, I stayed away from cities as much as possible. When I did have to negotiate roadworks, I prayed. I often prayed. I sang and prayed, and showered gratitude upon my guardian angels as I drove. In two months I did 3,000 dollars worth of damage to two of my four of the small sedans I rented - chipped windshields, broken mountings, murdered shock absorbers, dents and scratches - but I had no accidents.
After three weeks of driving around the state of Minas Gerais, I thought I had seen the worst of the roads. I was on my way to town of Sao Roque de Minas, near the National Park of Serra da Canastra, and taking a tarred road would have involved driving an extra two hundred kilometers, without any guarantee that it would be an easier drive. So I took a dirt road, not knowing that there had been ten inches of rain in the previous week.
Early on, I came to a T-junction, with no signpost, of course, so I stopped to ponder my options. A man drove by in a pickup, and I waved him down. My Portuguese is pretty poor, but he told me which way to go, and I gathered from what he was saying that there was a very tricky spot ahead, where I should stay to one side.
Sure enough, I came over a small rise and there was a sea of mud ahead of me. It was flat though, and consequently I didn’t take it very seriously, and didn’t gun it quite as much as I should have. Five yards from the end of it, my little VW slowed down and slid sideways, the wheels spinning ineffectively.
I got out to survey the problem. Many times I have dug my way out of mud, but here there was nothing to dig: the surface of the mud was so slick that the wheels were just spinning on top of it. I decided that I needed to wait for someone to push. Bemoaning the fact that I could not push and drive at the same time, I pulled out my little stove and made a cup of tea while I waited for the necessary ‘someone’ to arrive. Since I’m Scottish, tea always calms me down when I’m distressed. There didn’t seem any real reason to worry - this was an agricultural area, and I could see a tractor and house in the near distance. Help was not far away if it didn’t soon transpire right here. My principal concern was that this mud might recur further along the road. Perhaps the sensible thing would be to turn round (when help arrived), and take the tarred road. But how could I know?
As I sat on the verge drinking my tea, a car appeared at the other end of the mud. There was no way the driver could be sure of getting around my car, so I assumed he would stop there and come walking over to check out the situation. I was wrong. After a brief pause he drove on, slipping and sliding to and fro but moving steadily forward. My car was right in his path. I held my breath as he closed in, anticipating that agonizing screech of metal scraping on metal. Surely he would have to stop. No. Somehow he managed to get by, inches between the two vehicles. He reached the end of the mud and picked up speed, soon disappearing round a corner.
I stared after him in annoyed disbelief. How could he fail to help? Did he think I had stopped here for fun? Damn Brazilians, they are so like that, either very helpful or completely callous. Then I thought, if he can do it, so can I. The tires were completely covered in a thick layer of mud, which I removed with a screwdriver. I started up the car, and gunned it. She picked up a little traction. We inched forward. A huge flock of cackling green parrots flew overhead. The car got a grip. We shot off again, onto the hardpack.
With this success under my belt, I certainly wasn’t turning back. I drove on a few miles. At the next bad spot, on a hill, where another car was stuck, without any sign of its owner in the vicinity, my little vehicle made it almost all the way up until she slowed down and stalled. The thick red mud was as slick as any I had ever come across, and I slid onto my butt several times when I got out of the car. Taking my shoes off enabled me to get a better grip with my toes. Since the mud clung to everything it touched, I was already covered with mud from head to toe, and a little more on my feet made no odds. I could see that the tires would have a grip a little further over to the left. I dug a pathway for the car, with my hands, since I had no shovel, and we managed to inch sideways. Once again her tires grabbed, like they were meant to, and we reached the top. Grinning, I patted the dash. Good for you girl, you can do it.
But the terrain was getting hillier. As I slid down one steep hill, narrowly avoiding the huge troughs that had been created by a much bigger vehicle than me, I thought, this puts paid to any chance I had of returning this way, I’d never get back up this hill.
The grass in the fields beside the road was very green and lush; the black and white milking cows were quite presentable, certainly fatter than any I had seen in Brazil so far. I noticed splashes of milk spilt on the road in a couple of places where I stopped. It must be hell getting the milk to town when it rains like this, but if they can get in and out, so can I. Then I looked at my little rental car, and wasn’t so sure. A pickup passed me going the other way, which was reassuring, although I reminded myself that it was a four wheel drive, with much higher clearance than me. Still, some of these small cars have very good traction, and we’ve done very well so far.
I slid down a particularly steep hill to a bridge over a fast flowing muddy river, where a big truck was parked, or stuck, at the side of the road. The driver standing beside it waved me down for a brief conversation. I figured out he was asking me if I had come all the way from the last town. When I said yes, he looked impressed. I asked if this was the road to Sao Roque de Minas, and he gave me the thumbs up. I carried on, negotiating two more tricky uphills, by patrolling them first on foot to see which side of the road looked easiest, and then taking them as fast as I could. The downhills were terrifying since I felt like I had no control, and, indeed, I probably didn’t, since the car would simply slide until she hit a big ridge of mud that stopped her. Finally I got stuck on an uphill where the existing ruts were so slimy and deep, that my little car was saddled on her belly. I considered going to a farm nearby for a shovel to dig myself a pathway, but even if I did manage to dig myself out, how many more hills were like this? I figured I had at least another ten kilometers to go.
Since it was only three thirty in the afternoon, there was a good chance that someone would come by, although I had seen no vehicles going this direction so far. I made another cup of tea, attempting to reassure myself as I waited: I had everything I needed in the car; this wasn’t a bad place to spend the night, with beautiful green folded hills and ridges all around. I constantly imagined I heard vehicles, which kept me on edge, though I probably wouldn’t have had much luck relaxing anyway; my brain was too busy going over possible solutions to my predicament. An hour or so passed before I heard a vehicle that really was coming my way.
It turned out to be a truck with chains on its tires, towing another truck, which was swinging all over the slick surface. The little convoy inched up towards me at about two miles an hour, engines roaring. I stood on tenterhooks by the side of the road, not sure whether to worry most about the possibility that they would not help, or the likelihood that the second vehicle, which appeared to be quite out of control, would smash sideways into my car. I prayed busily, promising that I would never again risk a road like this, almost closing my eyes to avoid seeing the inevitable, and then the driver somehow managed to swing the other way at exactly the right moment. I waved at the driver of the first vehicle, who nodded and waved in return, so I knew he was going to come back for me when he could stop. He’s one of the helpful Brazilians, I am so lucky.
I walked up to meet them at the top of the hill, where they stopped to unhook the towed vehicle, which then set off on its own, leaving the one with chains. In Brazil people are always traveling in the beds of trucks, and a whole gang of women, kids and a couple of guys were standing up in the back of this one, laughing and joking. They eyed me up with puzzled expressions, trying unsuccessfully to pigeonhole this very dirty gray-haired person with tattoos and no shoes, who was traveling alone. I rattled off a few sentences in my bad Portuguese, but what I needed was obvious. The driver, a small man with a sweet smile, backed down to my car, and one of his (male) passengers tied the rope underneath. I started her up and off we went, no problem. At the top we undid the rope and I offered him money along with profuse thanks, but he pointed ahead, saying, “Hasta Sao Roque,” which I took to mean we hadn’t reached safety yet, and he wasn’t going to abandon me. I didn’t try to remonstrate.
We set off again. I slid down a hill behind him, and put my foot on the accelerator to make the corresponding uphill, but didn’t manage it. He backed down again to tow me, and from then on, he kept me in tow. On one hill, even he started losing traction, and as his chained tires spun, they flung up mud, spattering my windshield. I winced at that clicking sound that small stones make when they hit glass. At the top of the hill, we had to stop and clear a space for me to see through. In this way we went about five kilometers, until the road flattened out a little, and ceased to be so deeply rutted. I was greatly relieved not to be towed any more, since the rope was short, which downhills alarming, since sliding into the truck in front was a very real fear.
I followed him, at a safe distance, to a small gas station which was clearly the edge of the town. All his passengers dismounted here to go their own way. Again, I tried to pay him, but he shook his head and asked me if I wanted to go to a hotel. Then he took me to a posada round the corner. Two big jeeps with huge tires were parked outside. He pointed at them and then at me with a laugh, clearly saying, this is what you need. I agreed heartily. He still refused my money, which was a surprise. Brazilians are a strange mixture: some see foreign travelers only as a useful source of cash; others, who have met very few foreigners, see them as weird oddities, not quite human; and yet others, like my rescuer, want to help them. Perhaps it was my obvious plight that made him feel so generous, but the fact that he didn’t use it as an excuse to demand money set him apart from many of his countrymen.
He left me in the care of a shorthaired older woman with a sweet smile. She burst out laughing, throwing her hands in the air, when she saw me all covered in mud, and then was clearly impressed when he explained how I got that way. She showed me to a small room, and I got immediately in the shower, peeling off my clothes under the flow of water. I never did get them completely clean, but I successfully rinsed the mud off my skin. As soon as I was presentable, I walked a couple of blocks up the cobbled street till I found a place that served food, where I ordered a hamburger with all the works. I wolfed it down with gusto. As I ate, a ten minute torrential downpour left the streets pouring with water. I considered my luck, and talked to myself sternly: Really, Mikaya, you need to be more careful, you’re always getting yourself into trouble because you don’t consider things before you do them.
Of its own volition, another voice inside responded: Yes, but you’re fine now, aren’t you? Help always arrives when you need it. And wasn’t it exciting?
What is a Marvelling Mystic?
I coudn't complete that silly form they give you for your profile. I hope that I will be telling you all about myself in this blog. It might take a long time, since I have led a very varied and interesting life. In the meantime, here is a brief bio:
I grew up in Scotland, and lived for twenty years in California, where I built my house from recycled lumber. I consider that one of my greatest achievements. An inveterate traveler and a prolific writer, most at home in the wilderness, I've had adventures all over the world. I've been a waitress, a hippy, a political activist, a pig farmer, a car mechanic, a tree feller, and an organic market gardener. My favorite activities are kiteboarding and horse-riding, which have both left me with scars. Five years ago, at the age of fifty, I had an epiphany and sold everything to take off on a life of travel. I'm ready to stop for a month or three or four, though I can't quite work out where.
My published books include When the Earth Moves: Women and Orgasm (Celestial Arts, 1998); I have five soon-to-be published books on my computer. I'm ordained as a Minister of Holistic Health with the Awakenings Institute.
Within the above words lie many exciting and fascinating tales, some of which I will post here. In fact a couple of them are already available for your entertainment. They're all true. The title usually includes the name of the country where they occurred. Feedback is welcome.
But I hear you ask - what is a marvelling mystic?
Perhaps the first thing I would say about a marvelling mystic is that she (or he) is indefine-able. Hence the strangely mystical label. I don't really relate to the word 'god,' since the only deifinition of god must include everything and everyone, but sometimes it's useful, so I am going to use it here. I have heard a mystic defined as someone who sees the actions of god. Most people only see the consequences of the actions of god - people dying in an earthquake, a fire consuming a house. I tend to perceive the world in general from a much broader perspective. Therefore I usually perceive that all is well. Occasionally I forget, and get caught up in dismal doomsaying and fearful anticipation of the future, which motivates so many people. I'm most certainly not perfect.
Anyway, about the marvelling bit - yes, I do marvel fairly constantly about this extraordinary and delightful Earth. What a remarkable and wonderful opportunity to experience limitation - having a physical body, and forgetting that we are god. We have really set ourselves up to play an extremely complex and varied game. We would congratulate ourselves constantly except that we must carry on forgetting that we invented it because that would spoil it. Imagine if the football players, the referees and the audience all knew that they could get together, change the rules whenever they wanted, and orchestrate exactly who would win! In fact we are doing that all the time, only we don't remember, and if we did, it would be a very different kind of life - exciting, yes, but different. The way we've set it up creates much more of an opportunity for the experience of being an individual with the ability to develop personal empowerment - which necessitates the awareness of oneself as connected to all-that-is. Personal discovery of the ability to choose (the ultimate empowerment) is perhaps the art of being human. I want to teach workshops about that sometime. Life is so much easier and more relaxed when you've worked out how to choose. It can be difficult, of course, especially to begin with - because you can't do it unless you are already relaxed and at ease. Ah, the paradox of being in human form . . . the most marvellous and terrifying choice of all.
I grew up in Scotland, and lived for twenty years in California, where I built my house from recycled lumber. I consider that one of my greatest achievements. An inveterate traveler and a prolific writer, most at home in the wilderness, I've had adventures all over the world. I've been a waitress, a hippy, a political activist, a pig farmer, a car mechanic, a tree feller, and an organic market gardener. My favorite activities are kiteboarding and horse-riding, which have both left me with scars. Five years ago, at the age of fifty, I had an epiphany and sold everything to take off on a life of travel. I'm ready to stop for a month or three or four, though I can't quite work out where.
My published books include When the Earth Moves: Women and Orgasm (Celestial Arts, 1998); I have five soon-to-be published books on my computer. I'm ordained as a Minister of Holistic Health with the Awakenings Institute.
Within the above words lie many exciting and fascinating tales, some of which I will post here. In fact a couple of them are already available for your entertainment. They're all true. The title usually includes the name of the country where they occurred. Feedback is welcome.
But I hear you ask - what is a marvelling mystic?
Perhaps the first thing I would say about a marvelling mystic is that she (or he) is indefine-able. Hence the strangely mystical label. I don't really relate to the word 'god,' since the only deifinition of god must include everything and everyone, but sometimes it's useful, so I am going to use it here. I have heard a mystic defined as someone who sees the actions of god. Most people only see the consequences of the actions of god - people dying in an earthquake, a fire consuming a house. I tend to perceive the world in general from a much broader perspective. Therefore I usually perceive that all is well. Occasionally I forget, and get caught up in dismal doomsaying and fearful anticipation of the future, which motivates so many people. I'm most certainly not perfect.
Anyway, about the marvelling bit - yes, I do marvel fairly constantly about this extraordinary and delightful Earth. What a remarkable and wonderful opportunity to experience limitation - having a physical body, and forgetting that we are god. We have really set ourselves up to play an extremely complex and varied game. We would congratulate ourselves constantly except that we must carry on forgetting that we invented it because that would spoil it. Imagine if the football players, the referees and the audience all knew that they could get together, change the rules whenever they wanted, and orchestrate exactly who would win! In fact we are doing that all the time, only we don't remember, and if we did, it would be a very different kind of life - exciting, yes, but different. The way we've set it up creates much more of an opportunity for the experience of being an individual with the ability to develop personal empowerment - which necessitates the awareness of oneself as connected to all-that-is. Personal discovery of the ability to choose (the ultimate empowerment) is perhaps the art of being human. I want to teach workshops about that sometime. Life is so much easier and more relaxed when you've worked out how to choose. It can be difficult, of course, especially to begin with - because you can't do it unless you are already relaxed and at ease. Ah, the paradox of being in human form . . . the most marvellous and terrifying choice of all.
Hawaii - Pele Pouring into the Ocean
Pele Pouring into the Ocean
In 1982, a fairly copious lava flow on the Big Island of Hawaii covered several miles of the road that used to go along the coast, and extended the coast line of the island by many acres. The same flow has continued almost un-interrupted since then, although considerably smaller, and often underground so that it’s not visible except where it exits into the ocean, and sometimes not even then. There are various spots along the coast where visitors can sometimes see it. You can approach those places from Volcano National Park, or from the other side, which is not part of the Park.
The local authorities want you to spend your money in the Park, so it’s not advertised that you don’t have to do so, but the other route is fairly easy to find - I went south from Pahoa for a few miles until I came to a road that veered off to the left. Although a little overgrown round the edges, it looked like it was going to be a good road until I suddenly reached the first lava flow, a solid black mound about two feet high. A sign told me: ‘Road Closed, Only Residents Allowed.’ Clearly people have been driving that way, though it’s very rough. I drove slowly for several yards and all of a sudden there was the paved road again. Quarter of a mile on, it once more disappeared under lava, then there was another nice paved section, and so on, until finally the paved road was buried forever. A large area of the lava had been flattened to create a parking lot. To the left is the dark blue line of the ocean. After dark is the best time to see the orange strips of flowing lava, or, on the hill to the right, the glow of Pu’u O’o itself, the vent which is giving birth to the lava flow. In daytime it is only distinguishable from the rest of the mountainside by clouds of smoke pouring upwards. There are frequently several cars carrying sightseers in the parking lot at dusk, but the first time I went, in the middle of the day, it was empty expect for another little Toyota Tercel, just like the one I was driving. The owner and I congratulated each other on having great cars, and I asked him, “Are you here to see the lava?”
He glowered, replying tersely, “No, I’ve seen enough of that, I’d just finished building my house when the eruption started in ’82.” He pointed up the hill, and I saw a tiny white square in the distance, in a patch of green, an island surrounded on all sides by fields of black lava. “I’m thinking of going there now, I’m just checking the weather. It’s a little wet.” A thick drizzle was falling.
“How do you get there?” I asked. It looked like a very long walk over this terrain. “Motorbike,” he answered.
“Motorbike!” I was appalled.
He nodded grimly. “Yes, it’s easy to get hurt, I don‘t go when it‘s wet. I’d have been much better off if my house had been burnt in the eruption, then I would have got insurance. As it is, I don‘t get a thing, I just own a useless piece of property. I probably wouldn‘t be able to sell it for $100. No one would want it.”
Motorbikes besides, the lava is not an ideal walking surface – lots of loose shale, ledges that catch your feet, and crevasses varying in size from one inch to several feet. It’s very uneven, with many hillocks, mounds, dips and holes. If you’re going to walk on the lava you should wear long pants and good hiking boots – but I have this problem that I hate my feet getting hot, so I was wearing shorts and sandals. The first time I tried walking out at night with only a flashlight, I miscalculated a little ridge, caught my toe, and fell flat. I guess Pele wanted some blood, although I got away with a few small cuts and grazes.
I had been told that the lava was flowing into the ocean along the coastline, so that evening I got there before dusk and walked for an hour or so, to a good viewing spot, on a little cliff overlooking a big wide ledge that fell straight to the sea, maybe fifty feet below. Huge clouds of steam, hundreds of feet high, were gushing from the lower part of the cliff, and I could see large red droplets forcing their way into the ocean, from underneath the older dry lava. A thin stream of steam came off the surface of the sea for about a hundred yards out, indicating that there was lava emerging all the way out there, at a depth we couldn’t see.
A few other sightseers were nearby, and a man on the edge of the ledge down below me was fiddling with a camera and a tripod. Looking at him, I decided it was safe to get closer, and negotiated my way down across loose lava, skirting around several places where steam was rising from cracks. The rocks were hot in places, and the breeze was distinctly warm. The ocean was busy with her usual theatrical drama: smashing onto the rocks and throwing spray around. I could clearly hear rocks tumbling over each other as they were dragged in and out. A little further along was a steep black sand beach. I’d heard that black sand sometimes forms instantly when the ocean hits hot lava, and it will erode away in a century or so. Real sand, which doesn’t erode away, is made by fish eating coral and spitting it out (I’d seen them do that, so I know that part is true), which is then washed up to form beaches by the action of waves. I’m not sure I believe that part.
A young couple wearing matching red T-shorts followed me down. It was certainly an adrenalin booster to be so close to such a splendid example of unbridled power. As the daylight faded, we could see a huge, vivid pink glow at the lower central part of the steam, fading and brightening alternately and irregularly. It started periodically spattering glowing pieces of rock into the air, less than a hundred feet away, and the photographer said, “We’re lucky, it’s just started heating up, it’s been low key all afternoon.”
I said, “It’s getting closer, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” he replied with a grin. I hid behind the woman in the red T-shirt, peering over her shoulder. Another woman, with long blonde hair tied back in a neat pony tail, clambered down to join us just as a particularly large piece of glowing rock was thrown into the air offshore, so that we all oohed and aahed, some of us stepping back nervously. The blonde woman said, “Isn’t this dangerous?”
The photographer, who had probably been here before, said, “Well, danger’s always relative, isn’t it? I mean, this ledge could fall into the sea any time.”
The woman in the red T-shirt said, “There’s safety in numbers.”
“Well, I think I might retreat to higher ground,” I declared, and made my way up the steep little ‘path,’ clambering over the sharp unstable black rocks, admiring other steeper spots where new lava, now black, had dripped over the cliff edge and then dried on the way down, just like streams of candle wax.
By this time, a couple of dozen people were gathered on the higher cliff to admire the thrilling scene. Some of them had brought picnics, even a bottle of wine. The photographer stayed down below until it was almost too dark to see his way back, then he packed his equipment and scrambled to join us. We all sat there a long time in the dark admiring the view, oohing and aahing as a particularly big spatter of lava was flung into the air, or the color at the base of the steam grew particularly lurid. Sometimes we could see chunks of red lava floating on the sea. Further along the coast we could see two other spots where clouds of steam gushed forth, glowing pink. Many smaller streams of steam, that disappeared as the darkness grew, issued from various cracks and vents inland. To our right, probably a mile away as the crow flies, three or four long irregular vents glowed red, constantly changing their shape and their course, but all of them going underground well before they reached the ocean. In the daylight, they only appear as faint red areas, with long bands of smoke issuing from them, but once darkness falls they are vivid gashes.
It was difficult to find comfortable places to sit, and the rock I had chosen was far from smooth. As I used my hands to lift myself up and shift my butt, I thought, this rock feels awfully warm. Behind us, where we had to walk to go back, a red fissure opened up. I was sitting next to the two red T-shirts, who were from Jersey, and we discussed how far away it was.
“It’s impossible to tell, isn’t it?“ he said thoughtfully.
“Yes, but if it was really close, we’d be able to feel the heat,” I replied comfortingly.
“I suppose we just have to trust that one is not going to open beneath us,” shrugged the woman with a sigh. “If I get back in one piece, I’ll certainly feel like it’s been worth it - this is incredible.”
Several other people were watching the latest fissure, and getting a little nervous. It was too dark for me to see anyone’s faces, but I heard one woman say, “I’m from New York, I don’t know about this natural stuff!” Going back to the car park was a good hour’s walk in the dark and I was probably the only person who would think of doing that alone. When I stood up, announcing my departure, several others also stood, and then it turned out that the blonde woman had come from the other direction, where we could see more red fissures to be negotiated, and more occasional fissures opening up.
“Isn’t anyone else going back that way?“ she asked the group. There were murmurs of dissent. Various people were full of advice for her.
“You’d be crazy to walk back there on there on your own.“
“I wouldn’t want to be walking back that way, look, you can see there is more activity in that direction.”
“You should give up the idea of getting back there tonight.”
But like many tourists, she was on a schedule. “I have to get back tonight, I have a plane to catch tomorrow morning. My car is parked over there.”
The discussion went on for a several minutes and I hung around to make sure she was OK. “If I walk back that way, would someone give me a ride back to the Park?“ she asked. None of the people who had been telling her she was doomed if she went back on her own spoke up. Someone said, “You could get a place to stay in Pahoa, I’ll give you a ride there.“
“No, I have to get back to the Park tonight. Isn’t there anyone who can give me a ride? I‘ll pay your gas.”
Another voice said, “You could probably hitchhike, there’s lots of traffic on that road.” I rolled my eyes at this suggestion - I figured she’d be much smarter to brave the lava on her own than hitchhike in the dark. Was I prepared to drive all that way? I really didn’t like driving in the dark. And maybe she would be a pain in the ass to hang out with. What if she walked really slowly? What if she talked too much?
“I’ll give you a ride,” I said. “We should leave now, because I don’t want to be up too late.”
I needn’t have worried about her walking slowly. Martha (a cartographer from DC) was a great hiker, zipping over the difficult terrain easily as fast as I did. A three quarter moon lighted our way, so we barely needed our flashlights. Someone had attached a tall pole with a flashing light to her car in the carpark, making it easy to find our way back. Without that signal to guide us, it would have been a different matter. I made a mental note to carry that kind of thing in my car in future, so that I wouldn’t be dependent on someone else being so smart.
At one point the breeze suddenly became very hot, which alerted us to an intense red glow about ten feet to our right, and another about fifteen feet to our left. We hastened our steps, then as we circumvented a large mound, we came upon a big vivid gash in the side of a band of rock. Veering away from it, we speeded up another notch, until the wind was suddenly cool again, and we could stop to admire the show now safely behind us.
One of the men from the group, who had tagged along with us, kept lagging behind, so we stopped to wait for him a couple of times - a little impatiently, I must admit. We hadn’t asked him to come with us, and he could have waited for some slower guides. But I would have felt bad if he had disappeared into a glowing crevasse.
Martha wasn’t just a good walker, she was also pretty quiet, so I didn’t regret driving her up the mountain. All in all, it was a great evening’s show - above and beyond even Pele’s usual high standard, and cheap at the price.
In 1982, a fairly copious lava flow on the Big Island of Hawaii covered several miles of the road that used to go along the coast, and extended the coast line of the island by many acres. The same flow has continued almost un-interrupted since then, although considerably smaller, and often underground so that it’s not visible except where it exits into the ocean, and sometimes not even then. There are various spots along the coast where visitors can sometimes see it. You can approach those places from Volcano National Park, or from the other side, which is not part of the Park.
The local authorities want you to spend your money in the Park, so it’s not advertised that you don’t have to do so, but the other route is fairly easy to find - I went south from Pahoa for a few miles until I came to a road that veered off to the left. Although a little overgrown round the edges, it looked like it was going to be a good road until I suddenly reached the first lava flow, a solid black mound about two feet high. A sign told me: ‘Road Closed, Only Residents Allowed.’ Clearly people have been driving that way, though it’s very rough. I drove slowly for several yards and all of a sudden there was the paved road again. Quarter of a mile on, it once more disappeared under lava, then there was another nice paved section, and so on, until finally the paved road was buried forever. A large area of the lava had been flattened to create a parking lot. To the left is the dark blue line of the ocean. After dark is the best time to see the orange strips of flowing lava, or, on the hill to the right, the glow of Pu’u O’o itself, the vent which is giving birth to the lava flow. In daytime it is only distinguishable from the rest of the mountainside by clouds of smoke pouring upwards. There are frequently several cars carrying sightseers in the parking lot at dusk, but the first time I went, in the middle of the day, it was empty expect for another little Toyota Tercel, just like the one I was driving. The owner and I congratulated each other on having great cars, and I asked him, “Are you here to see the lava?”
He glowered, replying tersely, “No, I’ve seen enough of that, I’d just finished building my house when the eruption started in ’82.” He pointed up the hill, and I saw a tiny white square in the distance, in a patch of green, an island surrounded on all sides by fields of black lava. “I’m thinking of going there now, I’m just checking the weather. It’s a little wet.” A thick drizzle was falling.
“How do you get there?” I asked. It looked like a very long walk over this terrain. “Motorbike,” he answered.
“Motorbike!” I was appalled.
He nodded grimly. “Yes, it’s easy to get hurt, I don‘t go when it‘s wet. I’d have been much better off if my house had been burnt in the eruption, then I would have got insurance. As it is, I don‘t get a thing, I just own a useless piece of property. I probably wouldn‘t be able to sell it for $100. No one would want it.”
Motorbikes besides, the lava is not an ideal walking surface – lots of loose shale, ledges that catch your feet, and crevasses varying in size from one inch to several feet. It’s very uneven, with many hillocks, mounds, dips and holes. If you’re going to walk on the lava you should wear long pants and good hiking boots – but I have this problem that I hate my feet getting hot, so I was wearing shorts and sandals. The first time I tried walking out at night with only a flashlight, I miscalculated a little ridge, caught my toe, and fell flat. I guess Pele wanted some blood, although I got away with a few small cuts and grazes.
I had been told that the lava was flowing into the ocean along the coastline, so that evening I got there before dusk and walked for an hour or so, to a good viewing spot, on a little cliff overlooking a big wide ledge that fell straight to the sea, maybe fifty feet below. Huge clouds of steam, hundreds of feet high, were gushing from the lower part of the cliff, and I could see large red droplets forcing their way into the ocean, from underneath the older dry lava. A thin stream of steam came off the surface of the sea for about a hundred yards out, indicating that there was lava emerging all the way out there, at a depth we couldn’t see.
A few other sightseers were nearby, and a man on the edge of the ledge down below me was fiddling with a camera and a tripod. Looking at him, I decided it was safe to get closer, and negotiated my way down across loose lava, skirting around several places where steam was rising from cracks. The rocks were hot in places, and the breeze was distinctly warm. The ocean was busy with her usual theatrical drama: smashing onto the rocks and throwing spray around. I could clearly hear rocks tumbling over each other as they were dragged in and out. A little further along was a steep black sand beach. I’d heard that black sand sometimes forms instantly when the ocean hits hot lava, and it will erode away in a century or so. Real sand, which doesn’t erode away, is made by fish eating coral and spitting it out (I’d seen them do that, so I know that part is true), which is then washed up to form beaches by the action of waves. I’m not sure I believe that part.
A young couple wearing matching red T-shorts followed me down. It was certainly an adrenalin booster to be so close to such a splendid example of unbridled power. As the daylight faded, we could see a huge, vivid pink glow at the lower central part of the steam, fading and brightening alternately and irregularly. It started periodically spattering glowing pieces of rock into the air, less than a hundred feet away, and the photographer said, “We’re lucky, it’s just started heating up, it’s been low key all afternoon.”
I said, “It’s getting closer, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” he replied with a grin. I hid behind the woman in the red T-shirt, peering over her shoulder. Another woman, with long blonde hair tied back in a neat pony tail, clambered down to join us just as a particularly large piece of glowing rock was thrown into the air offshore, so that we all oohed and aahed, some of us stepping back nervously. The blonde woman said, “Isn’t this dangerous?”
The photographer, who had probably been here before, said, “Well, danger’s always relative, isn’t it? I mean, this ledge could fall into the sea any time.”
The woman in the red T-shirt said, “There’s safety in numbers.”
“Well, I think I might retreat to higher ground,” I declared, and made my way up the steep little ‘path,’ clambering over the sharp unstable black rocks, admiring other steeper spots where new lava, now black, had dripped over the cliff edge and then dried on the way down, just like streams of candle wax.
By this time, a couple of dozen people were gathered on the higher cliff to admire the thrilling scene. Some of them had brought picnics, even a bottle of wine. The photographer stayed down below until it was almost too dark to see his way back, then he packed his equipment and scrambled to join us. We all sat there a long time in the dark admiring the view, oohing and aahing as a particularly big spatter of lava was flung into the air, or the color at the base of the steam grew particularly lurid. Sometimes we could see chunks of red lava floating on the sea. Further along the coast we could see two other spots where clouds of steam gushed forth, glowing pink. Many smaller streams of steam, that disappeared as the darkness grew, issued from various cracks and vents inland. To our right, probably a mile away as the crow flies, three or four long irregular vents glowed red, constantly changing their shape and their course, but all of them going underground well before they reached the ocean. In the daylight, they only appear as faint red areas, with long bands of smoke issuing from them, but once darkness falls they are vivid gashes.
It was difficult to find comfortable places to sit, and the rock I had chosen was far from smooth. As I used my hands to lift myself up and shift my butt, I thought, this rock feels awfully warm. Behind us, where we had to walk to go back, a red fissure opened up. I was sitting next to the two red T-shirts, who were from Jersey, and we discussed how far away it was.
“It’s impossible to tell, isn’t it?“ he said thoughtfully.
“Yes, but if it was really close, we’d be able to feel the heat,” I replied comfortingly.
“I suppose we just have to trust that one is not going to open beneath us,” shrugged the woman with a sigh. “If I get back in one piece, I’ll certainly feel like it’s been worth it - this is incredible.”
Several other people were watching the latest fissure, and getting a little nervous. It was too dark for me to see anyone’s faces, but I heard one woman say, “I’m from New York, I don’t know about this natural stuff!” Going back to the car park was a good hour’s walk in the dark and I was probably the only person who would think of doing that alone. When I stood up, announcing my departure, several others also stood, and then it turned out that the blonde woman had come from the other direction, where we could see more red fissures to be negotiated, and more occasional fissures opening up.
“Isn’t anyone else going back that way?“ she asked the group. There were murmurs of dissent. Various people were full of advice for her.
“You’d be crazy to walk back there on there on your own.“
“I wouldn’t want to be walking back that way, look, you can see there is more activity in that direction.”
“You should give up the idea of getting back there tonight.”
But like many tourists, she was on a schedule. “I have to get back tonight, I have a plane to catch tomorrow morning. My car is parked over there.”
The discussion went on for a several minutes and I hung around to make sure she was OK. “If I walk back that way, would someone give me a ride back to the Park?“ she asked. None of the people who had been telling her she was doomed if she went back on her own spoke up. Someone said, “You could get a place to stay in Pahoa, I’ll give you a ride there.“
“No, I have to get back to the Park tonight. Isn’t there anyone who can give me a ride? I‘ll pay your gas.”
Another voice said, “You could probably hitchhike, there’s lots of traffic on that road.” I rolled my eyes at this suggestion - I figured she’d be much smarter to brave the lava on her own than hitchhike in the dark. Was I prepared to drive all that way? I really didn’t like driving in the dark. And maybe she would be a pain in the ass to hang out with. What if she walked really slowly? What if she talked too much?
“I’ll give you a ride,” I said. “We should leave now, because I don’t want to be up too late.”
I needn’t have worried about her walking slowly. Martha (a cartographer from DC) was a great hiker, zipping over the difficult terrain easily as fast as I did. A three quarter moon lighted our way, so we barely needed our flashlights. Someone had attached a tall pole with a flashing light to her car in the carpark, making it easy to find our way back. Without that signal to guide us, it would have been a different matter. I made a mental note to carry that kind of thing in my car in future, so that I wouldn’t be dependent on someone else being so smart.
At one point the breeze suddenly became very hot, which alerted us to an intense red glow about ten feet to our right, and another about fifteen feet to our left. We hastened our steps, then as we circumvented a large mound, we came upon a big vivid gash in the side of a band of rock. Veering away from it, we speeded up another notch, until the wind was suddenly cool again, and we could stop to admire the show now safely behind us.
One of the men from the group, who had tagged along with us, kept lagging behind, so we stopped to wait for him a couple of times - a little impatiently, I must admit. We hadn’t asked him to come with us, and he could have waited for some slower guides. But I would have felt bad if he had disappeared into a glowing crevasse.
Martha wasn’t just a good walker, she was also pretty quiet, so I didn’t regret driving her up the mountain. All in all, it was a great evening’s show - above and beyond even Pele’s usual high standard, and cheap at the price.
Thailand - The Tiger Temple
The Tiger Temple
A casual acquaintance in Bangkok told us Sam's Place was a good place to stay in Kanchanaburi. It was on the River Kwai. Some of the rooms were on a big floating deck, but we chose to stay in a row of concrete rooms, with trees and shrubs outside. Staying right on the river would have been very noisy, due to riverboat taxis that cruised by at high speeds, powered by engines that were not graced with mufflers, and the floating discotheques that spent the night passing to and fro, blaring music with the usual Asian disregard for anyone who might want to sleep.
We had heard about the Tiger Temple, since it is a typical tourist jaunt. I was always leery of such outings, since I'm not a typical tourist, but the idea of getting close to a tiger was very intriguing. Apparently the monks at this temple adopted tigers who, for whatever reason, cannot be rehabilitated into the wild. Most had been found as cubs and kept in human company as they were growing up. At Sam's Place, there was a leaflet describing the temple, and when we inquired further, the smiling young woman who worked at the reception area told us we could go on a trip the following day for a reasonable price. So we signed up.
The next morning we were picked up at Sam’s by a truck taxi loaded with westerners. Before we set off, the smiling receptionist gave us a little lecture, assuring us that Lek, our driver, was very experienced with the tigers, and “also particularly with monkey.” I wondered if that was intended to make us feel safer. I couldn’t imagine that Lek or any other human individual would be able to stop an uncaged tiger.
There were already eight of us on the wooden benches that lined each side in the back of the truck, and we stopped at another hotel (called A Nice Place) for two more westerners, who sat in the front. A canvas cover kept us dry in case we hit a tropical downpour, but the back was open, so I sat by the tailgate, admiring the green landscapes we passed through. One of the other passengers was a young Scot from Glasgow, who was far friendlier than most Europeans, perhaps because he was traveling alone. Looking at my yellow shirt, he said with a grin, “I’ve heard that tigers are very attracted to yellow, they’ll go straight for anything that’s yellow!”
I grinned back. “Well, then, since you’re clearly a chivalrous young man, you’ll no doubt swap my yellow shirt for your blue one!”
Everyone laughed. The woman on my right, who sounded German and looked anxious, said, “It’s true that a tourist was seriously mauled by one of the tigers, isn’t it?”
“That’s what they said at the tourist information kiosk,” replied the Scottish guy. “But apparently they’ve got it all set up now so it’s really safe.”
“Safe by Thai standards or western standards?” asked the German woman.
I laughed. “Thai standards, of course, we’re in Thailand! If you’re really nervous, then stay away from them. They can smell fear, you know.” I was only half joking – I had been around enough big animals to know that they quickly pick up on the emotions of nearby humans.
We drove for about an hour, until we arrived at a single concrete building inside some gates, where we signed a waiver, paid 150 baht, and received a little booklet with a poem about compassion, written in Thai. The bad English translation made me wish, even more than usual, that I could decipher the strange rounded characters of the Thai script. Several photos, some of them very blurry, showed the bespectacled abbot of the monastery sitting and walking with tigers.
Lek led us amongst well spaced trees with bare earth in between, where we met two stags in velvet, their blunt horns all shiny. They were tame enough that they almost let us touch them. A few black and white pigs were snuffling around in the dirt. We passed through a metal gate in a wall, and on to a place where a large irregular pit had formed in the earth, looking like a natural feature of the landscape. There were no trees here. We wound our way down into the pit along a path in the red soil, and turned a corner. My heart jumped. Five tigers lay around on the ground in front of us.
The terrain here had formed high walls around a flattened spot. The only way out was where we had just entered. A line had been drawn in the bare earth, and several westerners already stood behind it. Three Thai men in plain long pants and T-shirts hung around looking important, while a fourth man, a monk in yellow robes, attended to a tiger who lay on its side on a flat rock. He was periodically feeding it small white pills that he placed, one by one, on the rock. Every time he did so, the animal lazily turned its huge head on one side to lick up the pill with an enormous red tongue. What was it ingesting?
Three other tigers lounged placidly in a group near the flat rock, and one more was sprawled on its side, further back against the red cliff wall. They all looked well fed and sleepy, and each one had a piece of rope tied around its neck. We were about twenty yards away. Thais tend to be small people, and the animals dwarfed the men standing near them. It was clear that if any of the animals decided to attack, they would cover the ground between us in a few strides, and anyone who tried to prevent them would be casually knocked aside. I was confident that it was not part of my destiny to be mauled by a tiger, but one or two of the other tourists were fiddling nervously with their cameras, and standing well back from the line.
We waited, and soon one of the Thai men, in business-like and self-important mode, as they tend to be when they are involved in any official task, came up to the closest tourist, took her by the arm with one hand and took her camera from her with the other. The camera was passed to another Thai man who took photos of her as she was led to the closest tiger, who was lying on the ground; she was briefly allowed to touch it, and then hurried on to the one that lay on the rock. The huge animals paid no attention as she laid her hand on them and turned to smile inanely at the cameraman. In this fashion we were walked out one by one, and walked back. None of the tigers even appeared to notice us.
Although the Thais were trying to hurry us up, the process took a while, since there were sixteen of us. I admired the tigers while we waited. They are so beautifully marked, the dull orange hide seared with black lines that end in perfect points, and one white line on each erect ear. When my turn came, the small Thai man grasped my upper arm firmly, and I had to resist the impulse to shake him off. “Camera?” he asked, and I shook my head. This wasn’t a photo moment for me, it was an experience. We stopped at the first animal lying down, and I squatted beside it, feeling small. I stroked its rough short hair, looking at its enormous feet, just the tips of the black claws showing, and its white throat stretched out, with its massive head laid out on the ground. Its eyes were closed and it only twitched one ear as I touched its back. My guide led me on to the second tiger. I sat beside it on the rock, my hand on its huge flank, saying, “You are a very handsome animal and I’m honored to be so close to you. Not that my presence seems to be of any interest to you, I suppose you get a string of tourists admiring you every day. Does it get boring?” Its white belly gleamed with dull cleanliness, like the perfectly curved long white whiskers around its mouth. The end of its long striped tail flicked lazily.
I could happily have sat there for half an hour, but the man was tugging at my arm, and I could only ignore him for a couple of minutes. I walked back reluctantly to the waiting group of onlookers. Liz went next, and as she sat down on the rock, the huge beast who was lying over by the wall lazily got up, starting to walk towards us. Immediately one of the Thai men ran to grab it by the tail. The monk joined him, and together they pushed the animal back down, smacking and slapping it, until it rolled onto its side with its head on the ground. Such harsh treatment seemed a little unwarranted but apparently the magnificent animals didn’t mind being handled roughly. Twice while we were waiting, one of the handsome comatose beasts rolled over, yawning hugely to reveal its array of massive white teeth, a large pointed canine on either side, and a long pink tongue; then the monk or one of the other men hurried over to smack it on the side of the head until it lay upright again with its head on its paws.
One woman didn’t want to go near them, but the rest of us all took our turn. Then the men hustled us out of the area. Just before we turned the corner, I looked back; the monk had put another little white pill on the rock and the tiger was licking it up.
Lek led us to some other concrete buildings, where three monkeys were in separate cages. One sat on a bar scratching itself, staring off in the distance all the time I stood there, only glancing briefly at me with its sad black eyes. The other two were climbing up, down and around their cages, swinging by one arm and propelling themselves across their small space. Their movements, so fluid and relaxed, were a pleasure to watch. The keeper brought one of the active ones out for us to pet, and Liz sat with it on her lap for a little while. I wasn’t interested in being close to them, partly because the monkey keeper was hovering nervously and I suspected he was afraid it would bite. I had heard that monkeys are known for biting people without any warning at all.
Lek was calling us, and everyone else was wandering back towards the entrance. As we walked back through the large compound, we saw the monk leading one of the tigers by its rope. He carried a stick in his free hand, and whenever the tiger slowed down, he walloped it.
“They don’t treat them very gently,” said Liz in a disapproving tone.
I shrugged. “They’re not gentle animals. I don’t think you can afford always to be sweet and gentle with an animal that could kill you so easily. You’d have to establish that you are in charge, and keep it that way. It doesn’t mean that they don’t treat them with compassion.”
Liz looked doubtful, and I changed the subject, not wanting to get into an argument. “The leaflet says that the open pit is the ‘exercise area’ but the tigers didn’t seem at all energetic. I wonder if they are kept drugged the whole time. What do you think those pills were?”
“Some kind of drug?”
“Yes, but what kind? Opium?”
“I suppose opium poppies grow well here. They tigers certainly looked relaxed and well fed.”
“Yes, I guess that’s the fate of the pigs we’re seeing.” I nodded to a couple who were rooting nearby. Liz’s eyebrows came together in a scandalized expression.
“You don’t think they feed the pigs to the tigers, do you? This is a monastery, they’re Buddhists!”
“What, you think the tigers are going to be vegetarian too? They have to feed the tigers some kind of meat. And they would have to slaughter some of the pigs anyway, because these pigs are going have lots of babies, and if they don’t cull them, they would overrun the place. I’ve raised pigs, I know what I’m talking about.”
Liz turned away. She didn’t want to deal with that kind of reality, and she didn’t have to.
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