Dispatches from Volcano: The Winter Solstice, Friday, December 21, 2018

Māuikiʻikiʻi o ka hoʻoilo... "Māui" is the trickster demigod who captured the sun, rather than Maui the island where said event took place. Iz Kamakawiwoʻole sang all about it. Kiʻikiʻi means to seize or ensnare, and hoʻoilo is winter.

Iʻm happy that the sun will be turning back north today, bringing longer days and the warmth of summer. Iʻll be walking, as I often do, to Keanakākoʻi this morning. Though itʻs still dark outside, neighbor rooster crows while ʻōhiʻa branches and hāpuʻu fronds dripdripdrip. The rains of the last few days have yet to abate, having started in earnest on Wednesday, when early in the morning I walked to Keanakakoʻi with new friend Janice who shared this stunner:

Trades were gusting up to 20mph, driving a chill fine mist across the lua, accounting for ānuenue, rainbows, seemingly placed in a clear sky. The bank of rain-generators can be seen at right. Because of the wind and the high level of humidity, our friend ao lewa, that cloud forming and floating above the abyss, was blown too toward Kaʻū. All that action canʻt be seen or felt in the photo, just like photos of erupting and flowing pele can only leave Her heat, scent, and sounds to our imaginations.

Itʻs been remarkable. The clarity of seeing. The brightness of colors. The "WOW" look at thats. Itʻs been a long time coming. As one who was, more often than not, outside paying attention, I am deeply appreciative for a multiplicity of opportunities to do that again. While I canʻt backpack anymore or tramp through lavalands, I remember. And the remembering is enhanced by clear skies and reminiscing with friends with memories better than my own.

Iʻve spent untold hours sitting and watching. On the sands at Maniniʻōwali or Halapē, or any number of other off-the-beaten-path (at least back then) places, seeing and contemplating was easy, undistracted as we were by cellphones and e-vices.

Now I have a favorite pōhaku on which to sit on the stone wall at Keanakākoʻi. Itʻs the perfect height and has that tumbled smoothness we favor in ʻalā (waterworn rocks) found at the shore. Perched there, feeling the winds and the warmth of the sun, watching various species of cloud come and go...itʻs all good. And then if weʻre in the right place at the right time, and are paying attention, we hear their voices call out as they approach. And with fingers fumbling for the correct buttons and swiping frantically:

Nēnē singlemindedly fly from their beds in the desert to their lawned feeding grounds. And looking straight up, this speckled spectacle of a sky:

I just used the selfie button on the phone and pointed it up, rather than doing precarious backbends and contortions.

And then these contortions:

These beds of lehu (ash) and pebbles, and gravels, and cobbles can be seen in the roadcut adjacent to the gate just past Keanakākoʻi. They comprise part of the Keanakākoʻi tephra, those yards-thick beds of ash thrown out and scattered (lū) perhaps during unrecorded lūʻōniu between 1500 and 1800 AD or so. The undulations at the bottom caught my fancy. Maybe windblown ripples on now-compacted mini-dunes?

The top of the sequence of beds at the roadcut consists of loose unconsolidated rubble, that deposited during the paroxysms of 1790. This chunk fell down the bank during one of our ʻōlaʻi. According to Don Swanson, itʻs sort of a breadcrust bomb. De-gassed and dense, it was molten when it was hurled skyward from its origin down in the conduit and slightly expanded as it depressurized. Its broken edges are REALLY sharp. May not seem like much, but itʻs an important clue to our geologic history. And yes, the picture could be better...