Living in a Geology Textbook

Prologue — The Dashboard and the Forecast

There is a dashboard called PELE that lives at brooksgroves.com. It monitors thirteen Sierra Nevada and Cascade lakes for water quality anomalies, cross-references USGS seismic data, and keeps a live feed of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory alert system. I built it over the course of several months. When we booked the Hawaii trip for my 56th birthday week in May 2026, I started watching the Kīlauea eruption data the way some people watch weather forecasts. By the time we were wheels up from Seattle on the morning of May 12th, the PELE dashboard was showing YELLOW/ADVISORY — the eruption at the summit paused, but Episode 47 forecast to begin between May 12th and May 15th. My birthday is May 15th. We were flying directly toward an active volcano on a precise timeline.

I have wanted to come to the Big Island my entire adult life. Not just for the beaches and the resort hotels, though the Fairmont Orchid on the Kohala Coast delivered on every count. Not just for the hiking, though we walked more miles this week than most people walk in a month. I wanted to come because this island is geologically alive in a way that almost nothing else on earth is. It is still being made. New land forms here. The ocean receives it. The process is ongoing and indifferent to schedules and birthdays and flight confirmations.

This is a record of what that felt like from the inside.

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Tuesday, May 12 — Arrival: Kona to Hilo

We flew Alaska AS 204 out of Seattle, confirmation CTPSHQ, departing at 10:04am and touching down at Kona International at 1:36pm. The rental car at KOA was a Hyundai Kona. I am not making that up. We drove a Hyundai Kona across the Big Island of Hawaii.

The drive from Kona to Hilo is one of the great road trips in America and almost nobody talks about it. You pick up Highway 19 heading north through the Kohala Coast — the resort strip, the lava fields, the Pacific on your left — then cut east on Saddle Road between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the two largest volcanoes on earth by any measure that matters. The road climbs to nearly 6,700 feet. The landscape goes from black lava desert to alpine grassland to eucalyptus forest. We passed through what felt like six different ecosystems in ninety minutes. On the way we passed the signs for Pohakuloa Training Area — the US Army's largest training facility in the Pacific, 133,000 acres sitting between two sleeping giants, named for the glacial gulches that cut through it. A military base in a glacial landscape in the tropics. The Big Island doesn't follow rules.

Hilo is a different Hawaii. It's wet, green, old, unhurried. Our hotel was the Grand Naniloa DoubleTree — right on Hilo Bay, 1959 construction, which the building makes no effort to conceal. The vibe is rustic in the generous sense of the word. The views across the bay are genuinely beautiful. A Norwegian cruise ship — the Pride of America — drifted past the window at some point in the evening, which prompted a brief discussion about the Jones Act, the Passenger Vessel Services Act, and why only American-flagged ships can sail between US ports. We ate Thai food — Mai Thai, about a twenty-five minute walk from the hotel, spicy noodles dialed in exactly right — and went to bed watching the PELE dashboard.

On Hilo Bay in the evenings, the outrigger canoe clubs practice. Six-person crews in traditional Hawaiian waʻa — the outrigger canoe — moving across the water in long steady strokes. I watched them for a while and thought about what we would learn at the top of Mauna Kea a few nights later: that these same canoes, these same stroke rhythms, carried the first Hawaiians across thousands of miles of open Pacific using nothing but stars, ocean swells, wind, and birds as navigation instruments. The canoe clubs on Hilo Bay are not a heritage performance. They are a living continuation.

We also noticed the Vegan Shop on Kinoole Street on our first evening in Hilo — a Vietnamese-inspired vegan restaurant with a 4.9 star rating and a menu that included spiced tofu bánh mì, fishless fish with chickpeas and nori, curry with almond milk, and pho. We ordered dinner to go that night. It was one of the best meals of the trip. Fifteen dollars for three choices, cash or card, open Tuesday through Saturday. The kind of place that earns its stars.

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Wednesday, May 13 — Volcanoes: The Day Before

We were up by six. I pulled up the PELE dashboard before coffee. Still YELLOW/ADVISORY. The forecast window for Episode 47 fountaining: May 12 through May 15. Later today or tomorrow most likely.

Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park — The Day Before

We entered the park at the temporary Welcome Center at Kīlauea Military Camp — the main visitor center is under renovation through summer 2026. Thirty-five dollars per vehicle, good for seven days. The rangers were watching the same data I was watching on PELE.

From the overlook, Halemaʻumaʻu crater spread out below us. The south vent cone was clearly visible — a dark cinder structure with bright yellow sulfur deposits glowing around the rim, degassing actively. The plume changed intensity while we watched. The sulfur smell reached us on the wind — not overwhelming, but present, unmistakable, ancient. This is what the earth smells like when it breathes.

The tilt charts I had been watching on the PELE dashboard showed a steep inflation curve — the magma chamber filling steadily. The laser rangefinder at Halemaʻumaʻu was showing the lava surface standing high in the vent system. The gas piston cycling was already underway. We just could not see the fountaining yet.

We drove Chain of Craters Road all the way to the ocean — twenty miles of road through a landscape that looks like the surface of another planet. Pahoehoe lava — the smooth ropy kind, solidified in flowing sheets — alternates with ʻaʻā — the rough, jagged, clinker variety. Both types are made of the same basaltic magma. The difference is how fast they cool and how much gas they carry. Pahoehoe moves slowly, degasses gently, wrinkles as it cools. ʻAʻā moves faster, traps more gas, breaks apart into rough fragments as it travels.

We played Coloratura by Coldplay driving down Chain of Craters Road. Ten minutes of building orchestral intensity, the lava fields stretching to the horizon on both sides, the Pacific visible ahead. Living in a geology textbook. The song earned its place on this trip.

We also found ʻŌhelo on the lava fields — a low spreading shrub with red berries just forming, growing directly from black volcanic gravel with almost no soil. ʻŌhelo berries are sacred to Pele. In traditional practice you offered the first berries to her before eating any yourself, by tossing a branch toward the crater. The Nēnē — Hawaii's state bird and the world's rarest goose — depends on ʻŌhelo berries as a primary food source.

Then came the ʻŌhiʻa Lehua — brilliant red pom-pom blossoms radiating hundreds of stamens outward like small fireworks. There is a Hawaiian legend about ʻŌhiʻa Lehua: Pele fell in love with a young warrior named ʻŌhiʻa. He rejected her because he loved another woman named Lehua. In anger Pele transformed him into a gnarled tree. The gods took pity and transformed Lehua into the flower, so the two lovers would never be separated. It is said that if you pick a Lehua blossom it will rain, because the lovers are being separated again. Both the ʻŌhelo and ʻŌhiʻa Lehua are pioneer species — among the first life to colonize fresh lava flows, building an ecosystem from bare rock.

At Punaluʻu Black Sand Beach we found sea turtles — honu — hauled out on the black sand in the afternoon sun. The beach itself is a geological event: pulverized lava ground by wave action into fine black sand. The water was rough, no swimming. We noted the stone circles placed along the beach — ahu — and kept our distance. An ahu is a ceremonial marker. Some are offerings. Some mark burial sites. All are kapu — sacred, off-limits. The concept of kapu runs through Hawaiian culture like a load-bearing wall. Some places, some objects, some actions are forbidden not as arbitrary rules but as a way of maintaining balance between humans and the natural and spiritual world.

We drove to the Holei Sea Arch at the end of Chain of Craters Road — a 57-foot natural lava arch where the ocean pounds the coast, carved by wave erosion over centuries. The arc of the drive from the summit caldera down through the lava fields to the ocean gives you the entire island geology in one direction of travel — from the active vents at 4,000 feet all the way to the coastline where new land meets the sea.

The HVO alert flipped to ORANGE/WATCH at 8:45am — Episode 47 imminent. We were at the black sand beach when I checked. A bartender at the Grand Naniloa that evening gave us the real local intel: check the cameras every hour, go immediately when you see it start, Volcano House is the best viewing spot, Devastation Trail gives you the best composition. We drank Kua Bay IPA from Kona Brewing. Aimee had a Sycamore Lane Cab. We watched the volcano webcam on the hotel bar screen and went to bed with the HVO notifications active on our phones.

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Thursday, May 14 — Episode 47

At 2:57am on May 14th, the south vent at Halemaʻumaʻu overflowed for the first time. By the time I checked the PELE dashboard at six in the morning there had already been multiple overflow events. We were in the car by 6:15am with Starbucks, driving back toward the park.

We were at Devastation Trail by approximately 7:30am. The trail gets its name from the 1959 Kīlauea Iki eruption, which covered this area in lava bombs and ash, killing the forest. The bleached white trunks of dead ʻŌhiʻa trees still stand in the ash field, a ghost forest. Against that backdrop, we watched the south vent doing what the HVO had described: gas piston cycles. Less than five minutes of recharge. Less than five minutes of lava overflow and spattering. A distinctive SO2 puff at the end of each cycle — the volcano exhaling — and then the magma drops back and the pressure rebuilds. We counted approximately twenty cycles. The yellow sulfur deposits on the vent cone glowed in the morning light. The plume shifted and changed intensity. The smell reached us in waves.

We had to leave for the Fairmont by mid-morning — check-in was at 2pm and the Mauna Kea stargazing tour pickup was at 3:15pm at Snorkel Bob's in the Queens' Marketplace at Waikoloa. We stopped at Kings Vietnamese in Hilo — bánh mì and Vietnamese iced coffee with coconut milk, the best possible fuel for a Saddle Road drive — and headed west.

The Saddle Road between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa at midday is one of the strangest drives I have ever done. You are at 6,700 feet between the two largest volcanoes on earth. Mauna Kea to your right — 13,796 feet above sea level, 33,500 feet from its base on the seafloor, making it technically the tallest mountain on earth from base to summit. Mauna Loa to your left — the most massive volcano on earth by volume. The Pohakuloa Training Area between them, the Army's largest Pacific facility, named for the glacial gulches that formed during the Pleistocene when Mauna Kea hosted glaciers. A military base in a glacial landscape between two volcanoes in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

We checked into the Fairmont Orchid at 2pm. The Fairmont Gold Lounge had champagne waiting. The TV screen in the lounge had the HVO webcam feed up. Episode 47 was still building — we watched the active lava flows on the screen with champagne in hand, exactly fifty miles from where we had been standing watching those flows begin nine hours earlier.

The GIS analyst who built a volcano monitoring dashboard watched his volcano erupt on the Fairmont Gold Lounge television while drinking champagne on his birthday eve.

Mauna Kea Summit — The Stars and the Eruption

We left the Fairmont at 3pm and drove to Snorkel Bob's at Queens' Marketplace in Waikoloa — the pickup point for the Mauna Kea stargazing tour, booked by Aimee. The van took us up. The visitor center sits at approximately 9,000 feet, where you acclimatize for the required forty minutes before ascending to the summit. Fresh lasagna confirmed. Sugar brownie confirmed. The silversword plants at this elevation are extraordinary — growing for up to fifty years, blooming once in a spectacular flower spike, then dying. Endemic to Mauna Kea. We spotted all five Hawaiian snowplows.

The summit is 13,796 feet. The observatories ring the cinder cones — Keck I and II, the twin ten-meter giants; Subaru, Japan's 8.2-meter single-mirror masterpiece; the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility; the VLBA radio telescope array. Thirteen telescopes from eleven countries on the summit of a dormant Hawaiian volcano. The air is above 40 percent of the earth's atmosphere. There are 300-plus clear nights per year. The nearest light pollution is thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean away.

Our guide gave us the Hawaiian genealogy of the universe — the creation narrative in which the sky father and the earth mother unite, their first child the islands, and Mauna Kea the mountain son of the sky father. This is not metaphor in the Western sense. It is genealogy. The mountain is a living relative. The summit is sacred. The ongoing dispute over the Thirty Meter Telescope — a proposed $2 billion observatory that would be the most powerful on earth — centers precisely on this. The Crown Lands of the Kingdom of Hawaii, never formally ceded, are leased to the University of Hawaii through 2033. Native Hawaiian sovereignty groups argue that no new construction should proceed without genuine Hawaiian buy-in. Our guide and a scientist named Sven had that conversation in front of us. The balance between native culture and modern science is not resolved. It is ongoing, respectful, and real.

The language revival belongs in this context. In 1980, Hawaiian was spoken by approximately 120 people. The deliberate suppression of the language through most of the twentieth century — Hawaiian was banned in schools after the 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom — nearly erased it entirely. Now there are thousands of speakers, immersion schools, and a generation of children growing up with Hawaiian as a first language.

Our guide also told us about Apollo. NASA trained astronauts on Mauna Kea's lava fields because they most closely resemble the lunar surface. The cosmic background radiation receivers on the summit pick up the faint microwave echo of the Big Bang itself — the oldest signal in the universe received from the tallest mountain in the Pacific.

Then the clouds came in and the guide gave a thank you chant. Before the clouds: Jupiter and its four Galilean moons visible as points of light in the eyepiece. A binary star system. The Cigar Galaxy — M82 — edge-on and dramatic. The Southern Cross, which appears larger from Hawaii than from Australia because at 19 degrees north latitude it sits lower on the horizon, creating an atmospheric magnification effect. Ursa Major. Gemini. Sirius.

And then, looking south toward Kīlauea: an orange glow on the horizon. Episode 47, fountaining at 650 feet, its plume at 20,000 feet above sea level, visible as a warm pulse of light against the dark from the summit of the neighboring volcano. The guide said this was unusual — not every eruption episode is large enough or the conditions right enough to see the glow from Mauna Kea. We happened to be there on a night when both conditions were met.

I took a photograph. The Southern Cross in the upper right of the frame. The orange eruption glow on the lower left horizon. Stars between them. This is the photograph of the trip.

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Friday, May 15 — Birthday

Episode 47 ended at 12:27am on May 15th. My birthday begins at midnight. The eruption ended exactly as my birthday began. I am choosing to interpret this as a birthday present from Pele.

We had breakfast at the Fairmont Gold Lounge — included in the stay — and the Fairmont left two cards with the birthday cupcakes. The first card: ʻIke. To see, know, understand. We hope the island continues to reveal gifts of ʻike in countless moments. The second card: Hoʻokahi. To be as one, unite. May you feel united in harmony and love within the diverse nature of Hawaiʻi Island.

Two Hawaiian words that described the trip better than anything I could have written in advance.

The birthday massage was Lomi Lomi — traditional Hawaiian. Most Western massage works one area of the body at a time, building muscle by muscle toward relief. Lomi Lomi works the whole body simultaneously in long flowing strokes that mimic the rhythm of ocean waves. The word means to knead, to rub, to soothe. The practice comes from the Hawaiian concept of Aloha and the belief that blocked energy — physical or emotional — causes tension and illness. The strokes release those blocks together rather than in sequence. After an outrigger paddle and a night on Mauna Kea it was exactly what both of us needed.

Dinner was Brown's Beach House at the Fairmont — our table looking out at Pauoa Bay at sunset, tiki torches, live music drifting across from somewhere deeper in the resort. The tempura tofu was good. The IPAs from Kona Brewing and Big Island Brewhaus were exactly right. The ocean was dark and warm and close. Aimee posted a birthday tribute on Facebook with photos from the whole trip — Mauna Kea summit behind us, the Superflux flight in Vancouver, Red Rocks in Denver. The crazy adventures, she called them. She is not wrong.

On the evening walk back to the room I found a gardenia in the hotel landscaping — white, waxy, six perfect petals, the most extravagant scent in the plant kingdom. In Hawaii, gardenias are worn behind the ear: left ear means taken, right ear means available. In the dark on the Kohala Coast on my 56th birthday it was just a flower doing what flowers do, indifferent to the occasion, perfect anyway.

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Saturday, May 16 — The Outrigger and the Market

The sunrise outrigger experience departed at 6:20am from Pauoa Bay. We climbed into a six-person waʻa — the same style of canoe that carried the first Hawaiians here across thousands of miles of open Pacific. Our canoe was named Kaulakahi — the single current, referring to the channel between Kauai and Niihau, one of the most significant navigation passages in the Hawaiian islands. Alongside us was Koa — named for the native Hawaiian hardwood tree from which traditional canoes were carved. No spinner dolphins that morning, but the experience delivered entirely in other ways.

From the ocean looking back at the island you understand something you cannot understand from the land. The Kohala mountains rise behind the coast. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are visible on the horizon. The lava coastline is continuous and dark. The first Hawaiians who paddled toward these shores from the south — navigating by Hokuleʻa, which rises directly over Hawaii, by the Southern Cross for southern bearing, by ocean swell patterns and cloud formations and the flight paths of birds — would have seen something close to what we saw. The island emerging from the water. The mountains rising behind it.

After the outrigger we found a geocache at the Mauna Lani Fishponds — ancient royal Hawaiian fishponds right at the edge of the resort property, where the kings of Hawaii came to fish. These are among the best preserved ancient fishponds in all of Hawaii. The cache coordinates led us along the lava coastline. Everything on this island connects to everything else.

Tennis at 9am with the Island Slice Tennis clinic at the Hawaii County courts. I used to play in the late eighties and early nineties. The muscle memory came back in pieces — footwork first, then the groundstrokes, then some approximation of the overhead. The backhand needs work. My Garmin generated a heat map of the session — two hot zones at the baseline, almost nothing at the net, a clear pattern of a player who prefers rallying from the back of the court.

Kona for the afternoon — cold brew at Lava Java on Aliʻi Drive with the Pride of America offshore again, following us from Hilo. The Kona market was more tourist-oriented than expected. Then Island Hopper Taproom for a tasting flight: Hoptopus Double IPA from Ola Brew at 75 IBU, Superdelic from Ola Brew with New Zealand hops, Ola IPA at 60 IBU, Overboard from Big Island Brewhaus in Waimea at 45 IBU, Big Swell from Maui Brewing, and Hop Island from Honolulu Beerworks at 80 IBU. Desert island picks: the Hoptopus and the Hop Island. Full pint of Hoptopus, El Scorching veggie burger, and then back to the Fairmont.

Lomi Lomi massage for Aimee in the afternoon — her legs from the outrigger and the tennis needed it. Gold Lounge for evening drinks — Kua Bay IPA for me, Hawaiian Smash for Aimee. Pool sunset. The Kohala Coast at dusk when the light goes golden and the water goes dark and the mountains behind the resort go purple is the kind of thing you think about in February when you are back in Lakewood and it is raining.

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Sunday, May 17 — The Petroglyphs and Last Morning

We were up early for one final walk before the airport. The Nā Ala Hele trail system — the Hawaii state trail network — runs along the lava coastline south of the Fairmont, and we followed it to the Puakō Petroglyph Archaeological Preserve.

The Puakō field contains over 3,000 individual images carved into the pahoehoe lava — the largest concentration on the Big Island. They span roughly 1,000 years of Hawaiian history, from approximately 1000 CE through the early contact period. The trail sign showed two designations: Nā Ala Hele and, beneath it, the badge of the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail — a federally designated 175-mile trail running around the entire Big Island coastline connecting fishing villages, heiau, fishponds, and sacred sites. We were walking on a National Historic Trail on our last morning on the island.

The petroglyphs themselves stopped us completely. Human figures with triangular torsos — the most common form, stylized but clearly intentional. A seated figure with rounded body and distinct head, unusual among the field. A large elaborate figure with a rectangular body cavity and T-shaped head, suggesting a person of significant status — a chief's cloak, perhaps, or a sacred container. Geometric forms that might be heiau structures, land division markers, or cosmological diagrams. And then, unmistakably, the canoe figures.

Images 11 and 12 in my photographs are among the most striking in the entire field. The elongated oval body with a figure inside and a sail or paddle above — that is a waʻa. A Hawaiian outrigger canoe, carved in lava at the Ala Kahakai trail, a few hundred feet from the ocean. Someone stood here, possibly a thousand years ago, and carved this canoe into the rock. To record a voyage. To honor a departure. To mark this coastline as a place where journeys began. Two days earlier I had paddled a canoe named Kaulakahi from this same stretch of coast. The tradition is unbroken.

Kahiki Mai. An ancient Hawaiian chant. The ancients brought their sacred food. Food to be planted upon the land. Given life by the breath of the sun. Awaken and sprout forth with life. Rise up and feed upon the tunes of heaven. Let it be done.

These petroglyphs are protected by Hawaii State Law 6E-11. Alterations or any unlawful process — petroglyph rubbings included — are punishable. This is not bureaucratic caution. These marks were made by people with specific intentions in specific moments. They are records. Birth records — families carved figures to mark the birth of a child, sometimes placing the umbilical cord in a small cup hole in the rock nearby. Journey records — travelers along the Nā Ala Hele carved figures at waypoints to record their passage. Prayers. Territorial markers. Genealogical statements. Every figure was carved with intention by someone who stood exactly where we stood, looking at the same Pacific, breathing the same salt air.

On the way back to the hotel, a Nēnē appeared on the lava coast path. Green conservation tags on both legs. It regarded us with complete equanimity and walked slowly off the trail. A few minutes later, in the shallow water off the beach, a sea turtle surfaced. Both of them, apparently, came to say goodbye.

Cold shower. Gold Lounge breakfast — included, extraordinary. Checked out at 10am. Drove the Hyundai Kona one last time to KOA, returned it, flew home on AS 205, departing 12:27pm, arriving Seattle 9:25pm. On the flight I was supposed to write a birthday letter to my 57-year-old self. I started it and did not finish it. Some things need more distance than five hours of Pacific airspace.

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Nā Akua — The Gods of Hawaii

Hawaiian religion is polytheistic — a belief system with tens of thousands of gods and goddesses, or nā akua, governing every aspect of existence from the creation of the universe to the growing of taro. The four most important deities are Kāne, Kū, Lono, and Kanaloa. These are not distant abstract forces. They walk among people in human form. They inhabit stones and wooden idols. All living creatures and inanimate objects — trees, stones, stars — contain souls. The gods are described as chiefs who live in the heavens but visit places and people that are special to them throughout Polynesia.

Kāne — The Creator

Kāne is the highest of the four great deities, the god of creation, procreation, dawn, sun, and sky. In the beginning there was only Po — the endless black chaos before existence. Kāne was the first god to become self-aware and separate himself from the darkness. When Kū and Lono perceived that Kāne had freed himself from Po, they too separated. The three gods together then created light and pushed the darkness back. They created all lesser deities, including Pele. Then they created the earth — and Kāne created the first human beings from red clay, with white clay for the head. Kāne is the ancestor of all humans, both chiefs and commoners. No human sacrifice or laborious ritual was required in his worship. Offerings of fish, pigs, coconut, and taro were sufficient.

Kū — The Warrior

Kū is the god of war, politics, and power. He represents leadership, assertiveness, and readiness for battle. Unlike Kāne, Kū's worship sometimes included human sacrifice — warriors offered to him before battle in exchange for strength and victory. He carries a flaming weapon said to contain the souls of those he has slain. He is associated with sharks and hawks. His full name Kūkāʻilimoku means the Snatcher of Land — an appropriate title for the deity who presided over King Kamehameha I's military campaigns to unify the Hawaiian islands. Kū reigned over the dry months when agriculture gave way to warfare and competition between chiefs for land and status.

Lono — The Provider

Lono is the god of peace, rain, fertility, and agriculture. He is a gentle deity who values growth, healing, and the cycle of life. He descended to earth on a rainbow to marry Laka, goddess of the hula dance. The seasonal period between October and February — the Makahiki festival — was dedicated to Lono, marking a period of peace, rest, and celebration when warfare was forbidden. Lono is also the god of music and voyaging. When Captain James Cook arrived in Hawaii during the Makahiki festival of 1778, some Hawaiians initially believed he was Lono returning — an interpretation that contributed to the events surrounding Cook's death the following year.

Kanaloa — The Ocean

Kanaloa is the god of the sea and the underworld, associated with voyages, the ocean's depths, and the spiritual realm. He is often depicted as a squid or octopus — an appropriately deep-water form. While Kāne rules over light and creation, Kanaloa guards the darkness of the ocean's depths. Hawaiian fishermen invoked his name before going to sea, offering gifts to secure a smooth passage. Kāne and Kanaloa, though opposites, worked in partnership — Kanaloa controlling the waves and wind, Kāne ensuring the strength of the canoes.

Pele — The Volcano

Pele is the goddess of volcanoes, fire, and creation — but she is not simply a metaphor for geological processes. She is the volcano. Kīlauea is her current home. The eruptions are not events happening independently of human meaning. They are Pele at work.

Pele came from Kahiki — the ancestral homeland somewhere in the direction of Tahiti. She traveled across the Pacific island chain searching for a permanent home, digging firepit after firepit with her pao — her sacred digging stick — only to have each one flooded by the ocean or destroyed by her sister Nāmaka, goddess of the sea. Kauai was too shallow. Oahu had too much water. Molokai, Maui, each island in turn rejected her. Finally, at Kīlauea on the youngest island, she found a firepit deep enough that even Nāmaka could not extinguish it. This is why Kīlauea has been erupting episodically since December 1983 — the longest ongoing eruption in recorded history. Pele found her home.

The ʻŌhelo berries are sacred to her. The ʻŌhiʻa Lehua flower carries the story of her love. The Nēnē geese are under her protection. The sulfur that turns the vent cone yellow is her presence made visible. Pele's Hair — the thin golden filaments of volcanic glass that blow downwind from the fountains — is literally her hair, caught on the wind.

Standing at Devastation Trail watching Episode 47 do its gas piston cycles, the SO2 coming in waves, the yellow sulfur glowing at the vent, the plume changing intensity with the wind — there was a specific quality to the experience that scientific description does not quite reach. You are watching the earth make itself. You are watching a process so much older than human presence on these islands that the appropriate response is something close to reverence. The Hawaiians named this accurately. Whatever you call it, it warrants attention.

Aumakua — The Ancestral Guardians

Beyond the great gods, every Hawaiian family had their own personal deity — an aumakua, an ancestral spirit guardian who took the form of an animal and watched over the family across generations. The sea turtle, the honu, is among the most common aumakua for families of the Kohala Coast. The shark, the hawk, the owl, the gecko — all could be aumakua. When a honu surfaced off the beach on our last morning and seemed to watch us leave, I thought of this. The Hawaiians who carved those petroglyphs at Puakō may have been of families whose aumakua was the turtle. The honu on the beach may have been waving goodbye to people it recognized as passing through, as it has for a very long time.

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The Petroglyphs of Puakō — Reading the Lava

The Puakō Petroglyph Archaeological Preserve sits just south of the Fairmont Orchid along the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail. Over 3,000 individual images carved into pahoehoe lava span approximately 1,000 years of Hawaiian history. Scholars believe the carvings begin around 1000 CE and continue through the early contact period with Europeans. The Puakō field is the largest concentration of petroglyphs on the Big Island.

Hawaiian petroglyphs served multiple purposes simultaneously — a single carving could be a birth record, a prayer, a journey marker, and a territorial statement all at once. The most common categories are:

• Human figures — The triangular torso figure is the most common form in Hawaiian petroglyphs — a stylized person with triangular body, horizontal crossbar for arms, and legs indicated below. The more elaborate the head treatment, the higher the social status.
• Birth records — Families brought newborns to petroglyph fields and carved figures to record the birth, sometimes placing the umbilical cord in a small cup hole cut into the rock nearby. These petroglyphs are genealogical records — proof of a person's existence and their family's presence in a place.
• Canoe figures — Elongated oval hulls with figures inside, paddles or sails above. These coastal carvings record voyages, honor specific canoes, or mark departure and arrival points along the Ala Kahakai trail. The waʻa was the most sacred object in Hawaiian culture. Carving a canoe in lava was an act of deep significance.
• Geometric forms — Circles, spirals, triangles, grids, and cross patterns. Their meanings are partially understood — circles often represent the sun or sacred enclosures, spirals can indicate water or the cycle of life, grids may represent land divisions or constellation patterns.
• Journey markers — Travelers along the Nā Ala Hele system carved figures at waypoints to record their passage. These are the equivalent of signing a trail register — I was here, I passed through, I am on my way somewhere.

The honest answer is that the full meaning is lost with the people who made these marks. We can read the categories, we can understand the general purposes, we can feel the weight of 1,000 years of human presence in this lava field. But the specific messages — the names, the journeys, the prayers — belong to families whose oral traditions were disrupted by contact, conversion, and the near-erasure of the Hawaiian language. The 120 fluent speakers of Hawaiian in 1980 carried the last living memory of how these marks were read. The language revival now underway is, among many other things, an attempt to recover the code.

What I can say with certainty: the Puakō petroglyph field on a Sunday morning before the tour groups arrive, in the early light with the ocean audible and the Fairmont barely visible to the north, is one of the most quietly powerful places I have ever stood. Someone stood here in approximately 1200 CE and carved a canoe into this rock. The same ocean was audible. The same light was on the lava. The Nēnē was probably already here, eating ʻŌhelo berries, indifferent to the whole thing.

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Ka Hae Hawaiʻi — The Story of the Hawaiian Flag

The Hawaiian flag is the only US state flag to include another country's flag. The Union Jack sits in the canton — the upper left quarter — and has been there since approximately 1816. Eight horizontal stripes of white, red, and blue fill the rest of the field, representing the eight major Hawaiian islands. It is a flag that has flown under four successive governments without changing: the Kingdom of Hawaii, the Republic, the Territory, and the State. That continuity across 200 years of radical political upheaval is itself a remarkable story.

The Captain Vancouver Connection

The story begins in 1793 and 1794, when British Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver visited the Hawaiian Islands on his Pacific expedition. At that time the islands were divided among several warring chiefdoms. In February 1794, anchored in Kealakekua Bay off the Big Island, Vancouver reached a diplomatic agreement with King Kamehameha — the chief who would go on to unite all the Hawaiian islands under his rule. As part of the proceedings, Vancouver presented a British flag — either a Union Jack or a Royal Navy Red Ensign — which was taken ashore and raised. Vancouver believed the ceremony meant Hawaii was being ceded to Great Britain. Hawaiian scholars argue that Kamehameha understood it as establishing a friendship and protectorate, not a cession. Hawaii was never formally part of the British Empire. But that British flag flew as the informal standard of the Kingdom until approximately 1816.

The War of 1812 Problem

In 1812, Britain and the United States went to war with each other. Kamehameha I, the newly unified king of all the Hawaiian islands, found himself in an impossible position. British naval officers in his court objected to the American flag being raised for American visitors. American visitors objected to the British flag. Flying either one would signal allegiance in a conflict that had nothing to do with Hawaii but could have serious consequences for a kingdom that depended on trade with both powers.

The solution was elegant. Around 1816, Kamehameha commissioned a new flag that combined both. The Union Jack went in the canton — honoring the British relationship that had helped him consolidate power. Horizontal stripes modeled on the American flag went in the field. Neither power could object. Hawaii was claiming its own sovereignty through the act of combining their symbols into something that belonged to neither of them. Captain Alexander Adams, a Scottish sailor who served Kamehameha, documented the new flag when he took command of the brig Kaʻahumanu in 1816. In March 1817, the Kaʻahumanu became the first Hawaiian vessel to sail to a foreign port under a distinct Hawaiian flag, arriving in Canton, China.

The Paulet Affair and the Eight Stripes

In February 1843, British Navy Captain Lord George Paulet arrived in Honolulu harbor and, in a controversial unilateral move, lowered the Hawaiian flag and raised the Union Jack, claiming the islands for Great Britain. The occupation lasted five months. On July 31, 1843, Rear Admiral Richard Thomas arrived to restore Hawaiian sovereignty. King Kamehameha III responded to the restoration with a declaration that became the Hawaiian kingdom's motto: Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono — the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness. July 31 is still celebrated in Hawaii as Sovereignty Restoration Day.

The near-loss of the flag galvanized Kamehameha III. On May 25, 1845, at the opening of the Legislative Council, he officially standardized the Hawaiian flag design with eight stripes — one for each major island. The number had varied since 1816, with observers reporting seven, eight, or nine stripes depending on which vessel they encountered and when. Eight was now the official count, and the flag has not changed since.

The Flag That Outlasted the Kingdom

The Hawaiian Kingdom lasted until January 17, 1893. On that day, a group of American businessmen and sugar plantation owners, with the support of United States military forces, overthrew Queen Liliuokalani — the last monarch of Hawaii. The Hawaiian flag itself was briefly lowered, and the American flag was raised.

But then something unusual happened. The rebels who overthrew the kingdom adopted the Hawaiian flag as the flag of their new Provisional Government. Then as the flag of the Republic of Hawaii they proclaimed in 1894. When the United States formally annexed Hawaii on August 12, 1898 — the occasion marked by the headline Flags Changed: Old Glory is now the ensign of the Hawaiian Islands — the Hawaiian flag became the flag of the Territory of Hawaii. And when Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21, 1959, the same flag became the official state flag. It has not been altered in any of these transitions.

The flag that Kamehameha I designed to declare Hawaiian sovereignty and neutrality in 1816 is still flying. It flew under the Kingdom. It flew under the Republic. It flew under the Territory. It flies today as the state flag. It is the only American state flag to feature another country's flag, and it is the only flag that survived every political transformation of the islands without being replaced.

The Flag Today

For the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, the flag carries specific meaning. Flying it upside down is a signal of distress and a declaration that Hawaii remains a sovereign nation under occupation. The 1993 US Apology Resolution, signed by President Clinton, formally acknowledged that the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States, and that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands.

The Crown Lands — the lands of the Kingdom of Hawaii that were never formally ceded — remain a live legal and political question. The University of Hawaii's lease of Mauna Kea summit lands runs through 2033. The Thirty Meter Telescope dispute is part of this same unresolved sovereignty question. The guide on our Mauna Kea tour explained it clearly and without rancor. The balance between native culture and modern science is the key, he said. It is still being negotiated.

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A Note on the Hawaiian Language

In 1980, approximately 120 people spoke Hawaiian fluently. The language had been suppressed — banned in schools after the 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii — for nearly a century. Generations of Hawaiians grew up without access to the language of their ancestors. The revival began with immersion schools in the 1980s. Now there are thousands of speakers, children growing up with Hawaiian as a first language, a generation for whom the language is not a heritage artifact but a living tool.

ʻIke

To see, know, understand. Deep experiential knowledge.

Hoʻokahi

To be as one, to unite. Harmony between people and place.

Nēnē

Hawaii's state bird. The world's rarest goose.

Honu

Hawaiian green sea turtle. Considered aumakua — ancestral spirit guardian.

Waʻa

The Hawaiian outrigger canoe. The vessel that found Hawaii.

Pahoehoe

Smooth ropy lava. Moves slowly, cools gently, wrinkles as it sets.

ʻAʻā

Rough jagged lava. Moves faster, traps gas, breaks into fragments.

Ahu

Stone cairn or altar. Ceremonial markers. Do not enter.

Kapu

Sacred, forbidden. The system of prohibitions that maintained balance.

Vog

Volcanic smog. SO2 reacting with atmosphere downwind from the vents.

Pele's Hair

Thin golden filaments of volcanic glass carried on the wind from eruptions.

Reticulite

The most porous natural rock on earth. Formed in lava fountains.

Mauna Kea

White Mountain. Son of the sky father. Sacred summit.

Mauna Loa

Long Mountain. The most massive volcano on earth by volume.

ʻŌhelo

Native Hawaiian shrub. Sacred to Pele. Primary Nēnē food source.

ʻŌhiʻa Lehua

Most iconic native Hawaiian tree. First to colonize lava. Lovers transformed by Pele.

Waipiʻo

Valley of the Kings. Sacred birthplace of warriors.

Kohala

The oldest volcano on the Big Island. The Kohala Coast where we stayed.

Paniolo

Hawaiian cowboy. From español. The vaqueros who taught Hawaiians to rope cattle.

Nā Hōkū

The stars. The navigation system that found Hawaii across the Pacific.

Mahalo

Thank you. The word that closes every transaction on this island.

Kahiki Mai

Ancient chant at the Puakō petroglyphs. Let it be done.

Nā Ala Hele

Hawaii Trail and Access System. The trail network along the lava coast.

Puakō

The petroglyph preserve on the Kohala Coast. Ancient marks in pahoehoe lava.

Ala Kahakai

National Historic Trail. 175-mile ancient coastal pathway around the Big Island.

Ka Hae Hawaiʻi

The Hawaiian flag. Union Jack and eight stripes. One flag under four governments.

Kaulakahi

The single current. Name of the outrigger canoe we paddled at dawn.

Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono

The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness. Hawaiian kingdom motto.

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Epilogue — What the Island Gave

We flew home on May 17th into Seattle rain and mid-fifty degree temperatures, which is the Pacific Northwest telling you that it did not particularly notice your absence. The GISP exam is in June. Work resumes Monday. The volcanoes continue without us.

The island gave us Episode 47 — 650-foot lava fountains, 6.8 million cubic yards of new earth, nine hours of continuous eruption ending exactly at midnight on my birthday. It gave us the Southern Cross over the eruption glow from 13,796 feet on Mauna Kea. It gave us Nēnē with green tags and honu waving from the shallow water on the last morning. It gave us ʻŌhiʻa Lehua blossoms and ʻŌhelo berries growing from bare lava. It gave us twenty gas piston cycles counted by hand from Devastation Trail at dawn. It gave us canoe petroglyphs at Puakō on a lava field that is also a National Historic Trail. It gave us a birthday card that said ʻIke and another that said Hoʻokahi. It gave us a gardenia in the dark.

A dashboard called PELE predicted the eruption. The eruption happened. The man who built the dashboard was standing at the overlook when the south vent overflowed. Later that night he stood on the summit of Mauna Kea and watched the glow of the same eruption from the neighboring volcano, with the Southern Cross overhead and the telescope domes behind him, and understood something about the relationship between data and experience that he had not understood before.

The data is the map. The island is the territory. Mahalo.

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Beer Log — Big Island, May 2026

Brooks & Aimee · Big Island of Hawaii · May 2026