Kiʻi of various aspects of Lono, one of the four major deities of Hawaiʻi, in the inner courtyard of the Hale o Keawe, at Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau. Photo by P. Sale, 2010.
This blog has been around for a long time. But over time, activity on it has slowed. If you went back over the past few years, you’ll find several posts, usually during the January new year’s resolution season, in which I swear I will post more frequently. Yeah, sure. Has not happened. But maybe, this time…
This time I actually paid some real money last Fall to do a major overhaul, get rid of a bunch of old stuff and give it a new look. Wow! And now I feel compelled to post more frequently. Okay, I hear you, let’s at least give me a chance.
I’m doing this because I enjoy putting words into rows and because I have banished AI from Word so I do not get distracted. During the clean-up, I discovered that since 2012 I had posted some 212 times, for 2200 pages of words and pictures. If I had been organized, I could have written a book, except I don’t want to write a book. I want to write short stories about science and politics and life and my own life and this rather amazing corner of the universe. Yes, lots of posts will likely be about coral reefs or climate change. But I guarantee there will be posts that have nothing to do with either of those topics. Such as today’s effort. So, here goes. (And, if you enjoy it, consider subscribing to the blog.)
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It’s 2026 and I am reminiscing on my interactions with Hawaiian gods. (Yes, the topics are going to wander far and wide.)
A long time ago, I was a graduate student at the University of Hawaiʻi. That, in itself, is an amazing statement, given that I am a Canadian, from a lower middle-class family, and the first member of my extended family on either side to ever seek education beyond high school. How I got to Hawaiʻi is another story, but there I was, virtually penniless, living in paradise, just a short car ride from Waikiki.
Hawaiʻi was new in so many ways, and I sought to learn what I could and experience as much as possible. Being a bit nerdy, that still meant putting in lots of time on my studies and being penniless limited how much playing I could accomplish.
Hawaiʻi was Polynesia and the Hawaiian people had a culture that was very different to the Judeo-Christian-Materialistic culture I had been raised in. I don’t claim to have immersed myself in the culture and history of Hawaiʻi, but I learned more than many graduate students from away. Still, what follows almost certainly contains errors, and only skims the surface of a complex society sustained by a confusing array of gods (akua) with varying powers. I learned a little about each of the four primary deities, Kū, Kāne, Lono and Kanaloa, and about one of the lesser, but still important gods, Pele. I saw the links between the Hawaiian pantheon and that of other parts of Polynesia. Even today the web is filled with accounts that contradict one another and I will not pretend that what I learned was correct. Two of these gods have been important to me over the years: Kanaloa and Pele.
Kanaloa is the Hawaiian god of the oceans and of the underworld, and I came to believe that a quiet word to Kanaloa would bring me good weather whenever I went into the field, which meant, into the ocean. If this is sacrilege, I intended no harm; I was young and this was the 1960s. Scientists can have their superstitions too. And I did seem to get more than my share of good weather.
On one occasion in early winter (May) of 1984, I arrived at Heron Island, southern Great Barrier Reef, to join a research cruise midway through its three-week duration. The science crew, students and postdocs for the most part, had just finished 10 days under nasty sea conditions, rain, windy and cold weather. There had been some sea sickness and everyone was cold, damp and down. As I boarded the ship the skies were clearing, the wind was dying down, and things looked promising weather-wise.
Incidentally, that was the field trip that took us to outer parts of the Swains Reefs complex that extends close to 300 km away from the Queensland coast in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef – the only time I ever got out there. It was an enormous expanse of reefs with few if any islands and in the course of 10 days, I saw just one other ship which rose above and then disappeared below the distant horizon.
I followed that trip, a couple of months later, with my first visit to the Florida Keys. There I was promptly taken to see Looe Key, at that time the only part of the Florida Keys marine tract that was protected as a Marine Sanctuary. I was told Looe Key was probably the best example of spur and groove formation in Florida, that pattern of alternating ridges and valleys that typically extends out from a reef into deeper water. I anticipated something pretty impressive.
When I got there and got into the water, what I saw was far less impressive than I had expected. Instead of ridges like I was used to, 10 or more meters wide, rising 6 or more meters above their adjacent grooves, I saw ridges 1.5 meters wide rising 2 meters above their grooves. I learned two important things: first that seemingly precise descriptive terms like ‘spur and groove formation’ can mean very different things to scientists with experience in different places even if they work on what is nominally the same ecosystem. Second, I learned that some reefs are much more crowded than others. While I had seen just one other ship in the distance over 10 days at the Swains, I nearly bumped into two divers I did not know coming round a ridge at Looe Key – the only time I have had a near collision underwater – and also nearly made the embarrassing mistake of clambering into the wrong boat at the end of our dive there. Some reefs are more peopled than others.
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Anyhow, back to our 1984 trip to the Swains. For the remainder of the trip, we had calm seas, sunshine, and beautiful evenings under the stars and I detected a definite undercurrent amongst the team of annoyance that I had been able to escape the terrible conditions of the first half of the trip. Come to think of it, the fact I arrived at our Heron Island rendezvous by helicopter while they were always relegated to sailing on sluggish ships probably added to my chilly reception. (I thought they should have thanked me for bringing good weather!).
Superstition, imagination, crazy new age gesture perhaps, but I think my quiet words to Kanaloa had a hand in bringing us good weather for the Swains. And my luck held right through my research career, even covering undergraduate field trips to coastal locations in Australia and to the reefs of Belize.
My relationship with Pele has been much more tenuous and I remain unsure she even knows I exist. Pele is a lesser but still important Hawaiian deity, the goddess of volcanoes and of fire among other things. Her current home is reputed to be Halemaʻumaʻu, the caldera of Kīlauea. And that is where I have almost met her multiple times.
My first visit to Kīlauea was at the end of 1964. Along with two friends I had been invited to spend New Years with Howard, a fellow graduate student from Hilo. Somehow, I found the money for my airfare and on December 28th we flew to Hilo. The next day we were low on the slopes of Kīlauea with a visit to the Puna region where volcanic activity in 1960 had buried most of the town of Kapoho but spared Pāhoa which remains today.
Howard, Bruce and Art explore cinder cones near Pāhoa, Puna District, 1964.
Photo © P. Sale
Pete, Bruce and Howard at another cinder cone, 1964. Photo © P. Sale
We got our first flavor of volcanism exploring some small cinder cones in that region before moving on to the black sand beach at Kalapana. That beautiful beach is now buried several hundred meters inshore from the new coastline due to activity in 1990. A new black sand beach is slowly being assembled.
The famous black sand beach at Kalapana, 1964. Photo © P. Sale
Backtracking to Pāhoa, we continued toward the summit of Kīlauea, stopping first at Kīlauea Iki, which had erupted spectacularly in 1959, before arriving at Halemaʻumaʻu. Pele was not active during our visit although she may well have been present – there were sulphurous fumes at the aptly named sulphur banks.
Halemaʻumaʻu was much deeper in 1964 than it is today and there were
a few wisps of steam. Photo © P. Sale
After Halemaʻumaʻu, we continued on towards the west coast and Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau, a sacred place of refuge for those ancient Hawaiians who had broken the law. We continued a stoneʻs throw north to Kealakekua Bay where Captain James Cook met his untimely end, and north to Kona, where Peleʻs sulphurous breath finally caught up with me and gave me a migraine, which led to spectacular projectile vomiting in the main street outside a bar. (Everyone, including me, thought I had just drunk too much.)
After that, things are a bit of a blur. We traced petroglyphs at Puakō, now nearly hidden within a vast hotel complex (thank you Marriott and Hilton). It was an open field not too far from the shore back in 1964. Somehow we also found time to partially climb Mauna Kea before getting back to Hilo in time for New Years Eve. So we probably slept somewhere, but I have no real memory of that. The remainder of that trip was spent close to Hilo and we eventually returned to Honolulu and school.
The Puakō petroglyph site – that is us hard at work tracing images just right of centre. Photo © P. Sale
Bruce hard at work tracing a petroglyph, 1964. Photo © P. Sale
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During the rest of my four years in Hawaii, there were a couple of very brief eruptions, but I had no money and most events faltered even before people thought about getting a plane ticket. Until December 1967, when my friend, Darrell, was visited by his parents, and I accompanied them to Hilo to see the volcano.
Halemaʻumaʻu in 1967 (the blue tint is because it was Fuji film), more filled (less deep) than in 1964, fresh black lava on the floor, and a few wisps of smoke. Photo © P. Sale
It had been erupting on and off and our hopes were high, but there was scarcely any steam from vents in the floor of the caldera. On our final evening, after dinner at our hotel in Hilo, resigned to the fact that an eruption was not to be, we heard on the radio that it had started up again. We raced back up the volcano for a breathtaking sight I still remember. Not just a sight – the red-tinted clouds of steam and ash rising above the rim, and the vermillion-hued molten lava bubbling out of vents and flowing across the caldera floor – but the cold wind against our backs blowing towards the caldera, and a roar like an express train – the sound of flowing, molten rock. Yes, Pele was there!
Later that evening, a photo cannot conjure up the iridescence, the motion, the freight-train roar or the wind at our backs propelling us towards the edge. Photo © P. Sale
Six months later I had left Hawaii for places south and west and my memories of Kīlauea receded into the past. But, despite a long hiatus, my interactions with Pele were not over.
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Over subsequent years, particularly during the time before it became possible to fly from Sydney to LA without touching down in Fiji and Honolulu, Donna and I, from time to time, would take a break to visit friends in Hawaiʻi en route to North America. Those friends were on Oʻahu, and our stopovers did not include side trips to the Big Island. But in Hawaiʻi, if you know anything about rocks, volcanoes are never far from mind.
With the arrival of the stubby jumbo 747SP and direct flights from Sydney to LA via Qantas in about 1977, our layovers in Honolulu came to an end and thoughts of Pele receded far into the background. Until 2010, when now ‘retired’ we took a vacation in Hawaiʻi, visiting Oʻahu, Kauaʻi and the Big Island. In Kona we stayed at the Sheraton, now the Outrigger, and were able to marvel at the manta rays feeding just below the lanai in the evenings. Naturally, our explorations took us to Kīlauea where we looked out over Halemaʻumaʻu where not even a puff of steam was offered up by a deeply sleeping Pele. Driving back to Kona, I distinctly remember agreeing that we’d seen the volcano often enough to last a lifetime. After all, acres and acres of rather new rock, with scarcely any soil or plants make for a depressing landscape after the novelty wears off – yes, I am not a geologist.
In 2010, Halemaʻumaʻu was pretty quiet – not even many people around when we took a look. Photo © P. Sale
On a cruise in 2017 which stopped in Hilo, we did not bother to go anywhere near Halemaʻumaʻu. Although we did take a tour to the Puna district, and I saw the developing black sand beach several hundred meters seaward of where that old Kalapana black sand beach used to be.
Well-cooled pāhoehoe lava, stopped in its tracks, seaward of the old Kalapana black sand beach, 2010. Photo © P. Sale
And the new beach slowly being created. Photo © P. Sale
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And then, years later, I reconnected with my old friend, Bruce, who turned out to have a cabin in the middle of a treefern forest in Volcano, a funky township just outside the gate to the National Park and almost within walking distance to Halemaʻumaʻu. In 2023, on my first visit to his place, Pele did me the dishonor of stopping her performance just days before I arrived. I got to see some puffs of steam, breathe in a few sulfurous fumes, and wonder. Pele is an elusive goddess, or maybe she just does not like me.
Bruceʻs cabin at Volcano, 2023 Photo © P. Sale
Plenty of steam, no Pele – Halemaʻumaʻu 2023. Photo © P. Sale
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In March 2025, she finally decided it was time to reveal herself to me again. Red-hued clouds above the caldera, and fountains of lava rising hundreds of meters within it. Over 8 days we visited several times.
Seems to be something to see at Halemaʻumaʻu, 20th March 2025 Photo © P. Sale
Evening of 25th March 2025. Photo © P. Sale
Notice how the column of incandescent, molten rock is cleverly hiding behind the grasses? Pele is elusive. Much bigger than it looks in the photo, 26th March 2025. Photo © P. Sale
On the last visit, when the fountains were higher than I had yet seen them, we had been politely told by a Ranger to step back behind the fence close to the rim of the caldera. Then standing at the stout concrete post and steel rail fence, watching the distant fountain, listening to the dull roar of the freight train, I rested my hand on the rail. It was vibrating. So was the ground beneath my feet. Then I looked behind me and saw cracks in the ground. Perhaps they were the kind of cracks that form during a period of very dry weather. Perhaps they were a sign of something else happening. Wisps of Peleʻs hair were falling from the sky, the fountain was roaring, the ground around me was trembling…
I did not panic. I couldnʻt. Nobody else was. And yet, Pele is some powerful goddess.
The fountains got even higher after I returned home, and they have continued on and off all year. Iʻve already booked my flight for a February visit. Maybe I will get to see her again. Or maybe not. Hawaiian goddesses seem to be a bit like that.
The railing, photographed on 25th March, beyond which we had trespassed on 26th March, when there was more to see. Photo © P. Sale
Why do people look away from the view in this world of cell phones? Night of 25th March 2025. Photo © P. Sale
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