Pamela Frierson - The Burning Island: Myth and History of the Hawaiian Volcano Country

The Burning Island

The Burning Island

Myth and History
in Volcano Country, Hawaii

PAMELA FRIERSON

Trinity University Press
San Antonio

Published by Trinity University Press

San Antonio, Texas 78212

Copyright 1991 by Pamela Frierson

Preface to the New Edition copyright 2012 by Pamela Frierson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design by Lyndsey Johnson

Book design by Abigail Johnston

Cover illustrations: Lava image, Kamira/Shutterstock.com.

Klauea Volcano, Bryan Busovicki/Shutterstock.com

Frontispiece: Lava fountaining from Puu cone, on the east rift zone of Klauea. Photograph by J. D. Griggs, U.S. Geological Survey.

Trinity University Press strives to produce its books using methods and materials in an environmentally sensitive manner. We favor working with manufacturers that practice sustainable management of all natural resources, produce paper using recycled stock, and manage forests with the best possible practices for people, bio-diversity, and sustainability. The press is a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit program dedicated to supporting publishers in their efforts to reduce their impacts on endangered forests, climate change, and forest-dependent communities.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 39.48-1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The burning island : myth and history of the Hawaiian volcano country / Pamela Frierson.

p.cm.

Originally published: San Francisco : Sierra Club Books, 1991.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-59534-173-0

1. VolcanoesHawaiiHawaii Island.

2. Hawaiian mythology.

3. Hawaii Island (Hawaii)Social life and customs.

4. Kilauea Volcano (Hawaii)

5. Mauna Loa (Hawaii Island, Hawaii)

I. Title.

QE524.F74 2012

919.69'10442dc23 2012005972

16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1

For Delta
and to the memory of Kalapana,
destroyed by lava in the spring of 1990

Contents

H awaii Island, 2011. When The Burning Island was first published, in 1991, Klauea volcano had been erupting almost continuously from its east rift zone for eight years, sending lava flows over a huge area and sometimes down to the sea. That pattern continued, with an interesting ratio of newly surfaced land (117 square kilometers) to structures destroyed (207) by the eruptions twenty-fifth anniversary.

Twenty-five years: a moment in geological time but a generation for humans. On the Big Island, enough time to begin to believe in a certain volcanic status quo. While I was writing this book, I witnessed houses sprouting back up on barely cooled lava. I told the story of Jack and his wife, Patty, who had built their house in Royal Gardens, a subdivision developed directly under the rift zone. As flow after flow entered the area, cutting off road access and igniting homes, most residents fled, but Jack and Patty stayed on, hoping to outlast the eruption.

Patty left a year after the visit to their house I describe in the book, when I walked into the besieged subdivision over a mile of recent lava flow. As the eruption continued into the new century, it burned houses in Royal Gardens until only Jacks remained. He continued to dwell in it. You could glimpse his roof if you flew over the flank of the volcano: in the midst of an asphalt-colored expanse of congealed rock, a green patch held one tiny red square.

Instead of ceasing, Klauea celebrated the quarter-century mark by blasting a second vent at its summit, in the traditional home of the volcano deity Pele, spewing rock and ash over the surrounding landscape in the first explosive eruption since 1924. A little reminder of whoor what forceis in charge here.

But in Hawaiian geopolitics, plus a change. One of the stories I follow in the book, with growing incredulity, is the state-approved plan to build a huge luxury resort and housing development, the Hawaiian Riviera, in an area where 25 percent of the land has been covered by lava since the nineteenth century. That plan collapsed, but not because reason prevailed. The principal investor, it turned out, owed huge sums to a Caribbean bank and ended up forfeiting his holdings.

Much discussion ensued about appropriate development in high-risk zones. Meanwhile the property changed hands and memories grew short. As of this writing the current owners have filed an initial environmental impact statement for a proposed village containing more than 1,000 residential units and 600 hotel rooms, along with a Hawaiian Heritage Center. As I wrote at the time of the proposed riviera, land use, even hazard perception, is strongly determined by economics in Hawaii. On this island, as everywhere in Hawaii, conservation generally continues to take a backseat to development, and the list of endangered or extinct endemic species continues to grow.

And yet the last few decades have seen a heartening advance in the understanding of island ecosystems. I wrote The Burning Island as an exploration of Hawaiian volcano country with a not-so-hidden agendato trace how Western continental views have often been imposed on both the land and the indigenous culture. But the now recognized importance of isolated island worlds as evolutionary crucibles, coupled with advances in mapping what is the worlds longest, most isolated volcanic mountain range, are allowing a true islander perspective to emerge.

The growing influence of Hawaiian cultural views as a philosophical basis for island conservation has been as important as new scientific knowledge. The indigenous culture has resurged in the last thirty years, reviving the language and moving toward self-governance and a restored land base. The Burning Island tells about the Hawaiian communitys fight to save the archipelagos last extensive tract of lowland rainforest, on Klaueas east flank, from geothermal development. That land now belongs to a trust for Native Hawaiians in partnership with the Trust for Public Land.

Native Hawaiians recently helped shape the management plan for Papahnaumokukea Marine National Monument, the newly formed sanctuary protecting the vast coral reefs and wildlife-rich islands at the northwestern end of the Hawaiian chain. This land too is the province of Pele. A few years ago, while working on a book about the region, I sailed on a research vessel past Gardner Pinnaclessea stacks that are the oldest above-water lava rock in the archipelago, rafted far northwest by the movement of the Pacific Plate.

Our voyage ended at distant Kure, a coral atoll built atop a drowned volcano. There, on a shrine of coral, rested a piece of lava brought to Kure the year before by the crew of Hokulea, a replica of the traditional Hawaiian voyaging canoe. The lava rock, collected from a recent flow at Klauea, honored the full domain of the power Hawaiians know as Pele, who traveled, according to tradition, by voyaging canoe from oldest land to youngest, there settling into her fiery home.

Every year science refines its own story about the journey of Hawaiian lava. In 2011 volcanologists here on Hawaii Island hailed the discovery of traces of very old seawater in young rock from Mauna Loa volcano. These ancient ions give a time stampa mere 500 million years!to earths colossal recycling: magma heated deep within the mantle pushes up to the surface, driving the earths tectonic plates apart; the edges of plates are forced down when they collide, sending rock deep into the mantle; at depth the rock remelts and is carried in a convective circle back to its origins, to be erupted again onto the surface. Volcanologists struggle to find nonscientific language for such vast forces, sometimes in amusing ways. One scientist likened the process to the movement in a lava lamp. Another pointed out that the rate of movement in this geological cycle is about the speed at which a human fingernail grows.