The Island of Fire and Ice

“In the middle of the ocean where East meets West is the Island of Fire and Ice, home of the volcano and doorway to another dimension and a different reality. Here magic lives, where the Earth itself liquefies and nothing is quite as it seems.” –Pila of Hawaii

That’s the Big Island of Hawaii.

I think I'll turn around.

“It sounded like if you were to put a bunch of rocks into a dryer and turn it on as high as you could. You could just smell sulfur and burning trees and underbrush and stuff,” resident Jeremiah Osuna told Honolulu television station KHON.

What challenges the people Hawaii are facing. And what about the Coqui frogs, the fishes in the bay, the tide pools, the mongoose, and the wild pigs? And, too, the gorgeous vegetation that is abundant on the rainy side of the Island is suffering from gaseous fumes.

Have you read that enough lava has poured over the surface of the Big Island to bury Manhattan 15 feet deep? A clear water lake has evaporated, and the Vacation village in the Puna district is gone, along with beautiful Kapoho bay that filled in during one night, and is now .8 miles of new land.

Oozing lava is fairly easy to sidestep, but now Pele, the goddess of the volcano, is upping the ante, squirting lava 1500 feet into the air and chasing it with hydrochloric acid and tiny glass particles. (Hydrochloric acid forms when the hot lava hits the cool ocean.)

While living in Hawaii, I continually wondered why I felt the way I did; feeling ill at ease, asking about the dark energy both my daughter felt. Despite the Island’s beauty, we felt unsafe. Pele whispers her message. She gives it to you, and then leaves you to decide what to do with it.

I’m sure that some of the inhabitants of the Island feel stuck without funds or knowledge to leave the Island. And it is home to them.

Some say, thank heavens for the lava. Otherwise, we would be inundated with immigrants.

Yes, a little oozing, but this is ridiculous.

And yes, the earth is liquefying there on the Big Island, and while Hawaii is expanding its shores, my book The Frog’s Song that tells of our experience there, shrank. Half ended up on the cutting room floor.

I’m not complaining.

I’m happy to be off the Island.

And if my publisher is willing to publish a tiny book, then so be it.  I guess, with your indulgence, my metaphysical wanderings that have been expunged from its original form, could end up here.

Information regarding the lost land of Mu--gone
Ley lines--gone
Tales of UFO's--gone
Find flow in one's life--gone.
Husband dear's trip to the hospital that gave us another reason to leave the Island--gone.
And the dramatic departure that I will tell you about later. I though was funny--gone.

When we lived on the Island we could see only puffs of white vapor and plumbs of sulfur gas emitting from the two-mile-wide Kilauea Caldera's floor. Now it is a sea of lava and the floor has dropped 220 meters.

Then

Now

However, the crater isn’t the worst of the trouble. Eight fissures have opened on the Hilo side of the island and are pouring forth their fiery rivers.

Hot lava has incinerated some 700 homes.

My husband read to me this morning that the Sacred Heart Catholic Church that has about 15 acres, is providing space for  20 tiny homes to be shelters for the refugees. 

“Three contractors came into HPM Building Supply with questions about how they could quickly build some kind of emergency housing for lava evacuees on the grounds of the different churches they worshipped at, Oliveira, the former fire chief, said.

“After connecting with Hope Serv­ices Hawaii, it went from a couple of buildings on church property to something bigger.

 “Things are moving pretty quick right now,” Oliveira said Friday. “If only the weather will cooperate. Things are so wet and more rain is coming.”

Last December, lava threatened the little town of Pahoa where we shopped and got our mail, but it stopped short of destroying the town. It didn’t cover the highway, the route out of town, as they feared it would, but went underground. Eight fissures have opened further on east burning up the Puna district.

 Still there a few miles from Kona

“On the Big Island, you are on special ground. You are at standing at a doorway where even the Earth itself liquefies and nothing is as it may seem. Many feel that to experience this energy will help them find direction in their lives.” –Pila of Hawaii.

June is Bustin’ Out All Over

“I never thought I would live this long,” June says.

Two days ago June celebrated her 95^th birthday.

 

I say “It’s because you appreciate life.”

But does she listen to me?

 No.

“I did all the things wrong,” she says. “I drank too much, smoked too much.”

But that was then.  Not now.

June ’s mother died at age 26 leaving June and her brother with a father who couldn’t manage two children, and so he shuffled them off to relatives.

June suspects that her mother died of an insulin shock as June developed diabetes at around that same age and has managed it without insulin ever since. He mother had gone to the movies, came home, lie down and died.

When June ended up with a fanatical Christian Aunt who thought that a girl who “saw things” was demented, June petitioned the court, “Your honor,” she said, “ I can choose where I live can’t I?”

With a nod from the judge, June ended up in a girl’s school.

Once grown, June joined the WACS— The WWII Women's Army Corps—where  she met Howie, the pilot of her dreams.

When he proposed she said, “But I can’t marry you, I won’t live long.”  (Thinking she would follow her in her mother’s footsteps.)

“So?” he says.

“We have insanity in the family.”

“Yeah, so does mine.”

“We have alcoholics.”

“Mine too.”

They married.

That was it, a life partner. They went to college together; she practiced her art—for she had always wanted to be an artist, and now she was happily married to a man who said, “Your job is to paint, not to clean the house.”

Eight years later his plane went down on a routine maneuver. Another pilot from an accompanying plane testified that he saw Howie slumped over and that he didn’t respond to radio signals. The plane crashed.

When two men in official uniform appeared at June’s door she knew why they were there, and they had to run her down to tell her.

Thus began June’s downward spiral of drinking.

But she got over it.

She studied art on hillsides with famous painters, she traveled, she had many loves, but none stuck until last year after she entered a retirement facility—a place she said she would never go. By a stroke of serendipity she fell in love with a widower named Christian.  For one year she and Christian were blissfully happy. He even said that after the first of the year they were getting “hitched,”

Except, he peacefully passed away the end of December.

Did June have a life without struggles?

No

But you would be hard-pressed to find a more upbeat person then June.

When I set off for her birthday party, my daughter said, “Have fun with June.”

“I said, “One always has fun with June.”

When I hear Abraham talk about one’s true self, I think of June. She knows who she is. Abraham says that when we feel that disconnect when we have been angry, or out of sorts, when we have been critical, and we feel less-than-honorable, less than a loving individual; we are disconnected from Source.

We came here to be on the leading edge, to create, to dream, to find the juice of life. Shit does happen, but you rally, as did June. She genuinely likes people, and tells herself, “I am friendly,” and people respond in kind.

Think about a baby smiling that pure joy in being alive. That was you once.

When I talk about Food for the Soul (aka Brunch), I mean feeding the spirit within. Find that moment of joy. Be grateful. Look out there at our beautiful world.  

You have probably heard the story of two Native American braves that saw two dogs fighting.

“Which dog will win?” asks one.

“The one we feed,” says the other.

 Painting by June Walton
Bad photo by me