The Red Road

In 2018, Kilauea erupted in a grand finale to the longest lasting eruption we’ve known. It began in January 1983, 40 years ago this year. I flew out to Hawaii for the first time on January 6, 1983, 3 days after Kilauea began erupting at the Pu’u O’o vent along the east rift zone. Back then it wasn’t yet a vent — it was a curtain of fire that ran along a crack in the earth that was part of the volcano’s eastern flank. It was remote and not very accessible, but we flew over the eruption in a high wing small plane that I could open the windows and lean the camera out to photograph. That image is hanging on my living room wall. That memory has been captured and recaptured in a memoir, and various poems. It’s imprinted in my memory.

The eruption continued in many different forms over the years, and I kept coming back to see it. Then the most convulsive and spectacular flows (and destructive of people’s houses, property, roads) took place in a year that I was so caught up in work that I never made it here. Elizabeth and I came with our Myths and the Land workshop the following year, 2019, and the landscape had totally changed. Roads weren’t there that used to be there. The way down to the shore had changed. Beaches were gone and new ones were created.

This year, we came a few days early to scout for the best locations for our workshop to photograph. The lava flows are hardened and black expanses of aa lava have been interrupted by new roads. There is no red road, it is all black these days. And there are places where the burnt out trees are bleached white on the black lava fields and look like bone yards. These places are now being cut down and cleared out, or covered over with green vines, ground covers and new coconut palms that have sprung out. It is amazing how earth re-wilds itself, reclaims its territory.

Yesterday, the surf was up, and in Kalapana we got enough of a break from the rain to go out and photograph a little bit, find some new favorite spots, and make plans for later in the week.