Sea Level is Sea Level

Pele wants me to tell you about the other side of her paradise.

I stood at the top of one of her craters yesterday on the summit of Kīlauea, part of the National Park System and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, also the most active volcano on earth with a Geological Survey index that places it at number one for potential threat to lives and infrastructure. I stared down at the epicenter of a 2018 eruption that changed the landscape of the region we’re staying in by the ocean.

So the house we’re happily cocooned in for this trip is at sea level in the Puna region and the crater I visited, about an hour and a half by car, is at 4,000 feet. Christopher’s mom lives right on the side of the mountain. She sends us videos when the lava vents open.

The neighborhood we’re staying in by the water in is a mix of vacation homes and squatter shanties. Entire communities were lost in the 2018 eruption and it changed the shape of the coast where my love affair with the wave sounds is happening. So not too long before COVID hit, this area was decimated. So many of the houses in this area are not on the map. People have just built on ground that no one returns to and cross their fingers that the lava will take a different path next time.

Usable water is a problem across the islands, as the Maui fires highlighted. This house and most of the houses around us collect rainwater in giant cisterns which provide all the water for the residents. There are faucets along the roadways where people fill their containers with drinking water. We’re in the rainy season now so water is abundant in the cisterns, but it’s not always that way throughout the year.

The price of living is high. Grocery bills are astronomical because so many of the goods are imported. This is the actual reason why Spam became so popular here (and on the breakfast menu at McDonald’s it alongside rice and Portuguese sausage) — it’s shelf stable and sustaining.

We passed acres of farmland on our trip up the mountain. Mr. Zuckerberg himself just launched a cattle farm in Kauai. It’s impossible to reach a lot of places without four-wheel drive. Many of the roads are dirt and those that aren’t are ridged with holes and buckles from the constant movement of the earth.

Even Christopher is happy to drive a Jeep here and our preferences for cars mimic the flip sides of our psyches — I drive things with lofty suspension and dirty tires, and he drives things that hug curves and look like moving art. So when he’s filling his tires with air and I walk by and say, “They only need an ounce, what’s taking you so long?” — he takes it like a man.

The neighborhood we’re staying in is known for hippies and gurus, lots of yoga teacher training and retreats. The flip side of visitors coming here to be one with nature is that many of the young ones are trust fund babies who make the festival circuit on the mainland and then come here to land for the off-season while they live off EBT and assorted other benefits. An abused system makes it harder for residents in true need to gain access.

Meth is a problem throughout the island. Most of the resorts are on the west coast near Kona, but in cities like nearby Hilo where the facade isn’t cleaned up for the tourists, it’s normal to see someone raving in the median. Users collect in groups near bus stops. (But as we were waiting for our plane to Hilo and a group of buff, Burner, surfer dudes grabbed their sporty bags and went to board the plane to Kona, I knew I’d made the right choice.)

As we were bouncing along a dirt road last night someone said, “That’s where the meth lab caught on fire.”

Later as I was talking to a woman who runs a commune she said, “The island has a shortage of skilled labor because everyone comes here to do nothing.”

So as I stood beside the groups of tourists taking selfies along the summit of the volcano (I was one of them) I felt a lump in my throat. It stayed there all night — something off, something that I needed to write about, something I needed to say. And like most gifts on this island, the words came to me at dawn.

Before you reach the summit of the volcano crater, there is a field of steam vents. I stood to the side of one and let the steam wash over me, all sulfur and heat and purification. The steam eased my bones and wrapped me up. I’d noticed a woman in the parking lot ignoring her husband and making her way over to a vent to stand in the heat one more time before she left and I thought — what is she doing?

As I stood there, I got it.

Same when Christopher and I later walked through a lava tube. It was getting near sundown and the visitors were dwindling out, but we kept waiting for people to pass so we could just stand in the subterranean cool comfort of it, feeling the enormity of it, like an earth hug.

In the balance between Fire and Water, there is life and connection and warmth and healing. The only way to find it is by acknowledging the two extremes.

As we were leaving the park, I left three almonds for Pele. They weren’t red, but they were all I had, and I hope she heard my whispered thank you.

On the drive back down to our little house in Pāhoa I watched the signs as the elevation ticked lower and lower, and I said, “I just freaked myself out trying to figure out if sea level was the same everywhere or if it changes with the height of the continents.”

I googled it, “The Pacific is measurably higher than the Atlantic which presents a problem with the elevation difference in the Panama Canal.”

“It’s not like the Pacific makes a waterfall,” Christopher said.

With this ever-changing and often hostile landscape, Hawaiians could have easily become culturally closed off, withdrawn, equally hostile. Instead, this place is truly the most welcoming, warm place I have ever visited. I heard about this more than anything — this kindness — before I landed. And it’s true, they’re just freaking nice.

There’s a lesson for us mainlanders in that.

Pele wanted me to tell you about the two worlds that exist everywhere. She wanted me to take a break from the awe-inspiring coastal shots and paint a clearer picture of the balance of extremes — the fire and the ferns — the way the lava eventually cools and the jungle begins to sprout back through the cracks.

There is a place where the two extremes meet and it’s up to us to find it.

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Note: as I was standing in the backyard jungle reading this out loud to Christopher before I posted, which has become the thing we do, he said, “Do you feel that?”

“What?”

And then the ground shook hard and the palms started swaying and it started to rain as I stood there with my mouth gaping.

“Holy shit!” I said, “Baby’s first earthquake!”

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Double Note: apparently that was a 5.7 earthquake and very near us. For those of you who are sending messages checking in, we’re all good. Baby’s first earthquake was a doozie.