You are probably aware that Kilauea Volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii has been erupting once again – though you may not be anywhere near as fascinated by it as we are in this house. On our visit to the Big Island in 2013 we visited Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and visited Halemaʻumaʻu Crater.
I also stood on lava while on this island, and that was a story in itself.
There was a live feed of lava on Youtube for a while.. you can still view those live feeds though they are no longer live.
I’ve been keeping an eye on a few different Facebook groups like Puna lava updates. Some of the footage there has been incredible.
Some bright spark took some pieces of lava from this present eruption and was selling them on Ebay. There is a large superstition around Pele’s Curse – Pele’s Curse is the belief that anything natively Hawaiian, such as sand, rock, or pumice, will effect bad luck on whoever takes it away from Hawaii. In 2017, over 1200 lava rocks were returned to Haleakala National Park which is located on the island of Maui.
I did not take the sparkly lava rock home with me for a different reason – we have a life rule. Take only photographs, leave only footprints. But even so, on the way home from Hawaii I gained a life threatening illness – on the plane I developed a deep vein thrombosis and two weeks later that landed in my lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism which tried to kill me.
It was not until I told The Other Half the story of this bright spark trying to sell the rocks that I realised – perhaps my DVT and pulmonary embolism were a curse from even just standing on the lava and touching it. That blew my mind a little bit.
Would I want to undo it, given the chance to go back in time? I think probably not. That moment of holding the lava rock, then turning it over to expose a sparkly interior was incredible. I will never forget it and I can go back there in my mind anytime that I like. But I am very thankful I did not bring it home with me.
In the midst of all of this, I saw these bracelets for sale on a local buy and sell group. There is no way I could ever wear one. :) That concept scares me deeply. Perhaps I am quite superstitious about this kind of thing.
I am sad to see so many people losing their homes. I am angry that people were ever allowed to build there in the first place. The volcano is active and has been for many years. It is not a safe place to live and insurance is far too costly for many of the people who do live there, so many of them have lost everything they have been working to build for many years.
You can view live cameras of Kīlauea Volcano here. There is a live stream of the caldera here. If you want to keep an eye on the map seen at the top of this post, you can view it here, it is updated regularly.
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We moved from Hawaii (the state) literally the day before this big new eruption started. Of course, we weren’t anywhere near the eruption, but people who aren’t familiar with the islands don’t realize that and kept bringing it up to us in our new location. I, too, think that the destruction is sad and am sorry people have lost their homes, but am mostly upset that those homes were there in the first place! Hawaii, like so many places, has become far too built up. I’ve heard several Hawaiian friends express the opinion that Pele is cleaning house because there’s too much going on in Hawaii, and I agree. My husband and I are both originally from coastal tourist areas and are so tired of seeing the development of fragile/unstable habitats and the apparent belief that ever increasing tourism is always desirable.
I am with you totally on this subject. I think I need to take more ownership of my belief in karma, but it does exist. It is not possible to act badly and have no opposite reaction.We must treat earth and all on it more kindly, including the inhabitants of the ocean. I can go on and on, but we all know. Be stewards, not spoilers and worse.
We also live by those words: Take only photographs, leave only footprints. I’ve been wondering how people could build there, too. Tragic and frightening.
Although we’re on the island farthest away from what’s going on with Kilauea, we follow it closely. We’re heading over there at the end of this month, but our itinerary has changed from visiting the national park to driving up over the top of the island and visiting the west side. Oh well.
People here take Pele VERY seriously; likewise, removing items, etc. There’s no way I would mess with lava or anything other natural item on this or any other of the other islands.