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The Traveler on the Big Island of Hawaii

April 13, 2006

I Felt the Earth Move – and So Did the Wild Boar

Part 1 – I Feel the Earth Move

At Volcanoes National park, there is a boom in real estate development. Not the kind with a realtor’s sign on the lawn, or bulldozers scrapping the land. This is brand new land.

Nature’s landfill, if you must.

Just as most of the financial district in San Francisco was once part of the bay. The south-eastern edge of the Big Island is being filled in with virgin land.

How many places can you stand on ground younger than you are?

A lava shelf of new, dry land formed of cooled lava where there once was ocean is known as a “bench”.

But the sea is a ceaseless and powerful adversary, and lava benches are not always inherently safe. A before and after photo at the visitor’s center demonstrates this well; one a wide expanse of flat lava forming a new coastline, the other with forty-four acres of coast suddenly vanished. Sunken into the sea.

The sea here is not shallow or tame. There are no reefs or gentle bays of any kind, as you’ll find over at Kona. The sea pounds the coast, bringing to bear its full depth and fury.

This makes for some dramatic coastline, as one may imagine. But imagining can’t do justice to actually standing at the edge of a mature bench and feeling it with all your senses. Sight, sound, taste, smell… and feeling.

Chain of Craters Road runs down to the sea from the 4000 foot elevation of the rim of the Kilauea Caldera. At the coast, the road turns east for about 1 ½ miles, running parallel with a mature lava bench about twenty or thirty years old. The road then abruptly ends, covered with lava from the most recent eruptions from the southeast riff zone of Kilauea.

There is a small turnoff just as the road turns left. Just beyond the road I am able to scamper on these cliffs with no more than a big yellow sign stating, “Go ahead, but this is the end of the Earth, and the raging sea below will swallow you up, please use your head”.

This tells me that the Park Service deems this area relatively safe, notwithstanding the unpredictability of human behavior. You won’t find common sense in a lava bench, so it’s up to humans to use their head – not always the best idea.

If the bench wins, and you fall into the sea, then consider yourself an offering to something much more powerful than you – or at least a dolt with no common sense.

But I digress.

A newly discovered favorite pastime is to sit on this bench about five feet from the edge. Close enough to feel dangerous, far enough away to satisfy whatever common sense I can muster.

Escaping the rainy day up around the Caldera (having just dried off from the morning hike) we drive down Chain of Craters right to this, our new favorite spot.

I sit and take pictures of the crashing sea and rolling blue waves, ringed with foam, running east down the coast toward the plume of steam rising several miles distant where Kilauea deposits her current offering to the sea. I stand on ground younger than I and witness firsthand one of the most fundamental and primordial processes of nature.

And there I sit, perched on the Edge of Forever, snapping shots of it all with my camera. My skills as a photographer are wholly unfit for the task, but I don’t care, there is nothing else I would rather be doing.

Unseen below me a particularly powerful wave crashes against the section of bench upon which I sit, sending a shutter - the familiar feeling of a small earthquake - through my core. My instinct is to reach out and grab onto something stable, but there is nothing. It is always humbling when the earth trembles – sitting on a lava bench adds a bit of a twist.

The night previous I had dreams of this bench suddenly crumbling, collapsing into the abyss. In my dream, I pull Jayne to safety as we watch in horrified disbelief while the section of land we where just on suddenly disappears beneath the sea.

I can at least dream of valiantly saving my Lady from danger.

But in reality I stop cold for a second as the mild tremor passes, look over to see Jayne happily gazing into the endless horizon.

All is well.

I continue snapping shots, hoping to take some of this home with me.

Part II – The Wild Boar Feels the Earth Move

Only about a mile more to go up Chain of Craters Road back to the Caldera, coming up a small rise, I see a large black rock at the side of the road.

Only this black rock appears to have a snout stuck into the earth, and a tail, and as I move closer this rock is standing on four legs.

I am moving at the stated speed limit, about 45 mile per hour, but the curiosity of this big black rock with a snout, tail, and four legs begs some caution and I begin to slow down.

The big black rock is, of course, not a rock. It is a wild boar; a big one, maybe about five or six hundred pounds.

As this realization makes its way through my brain and down to my driving reactions, the boar is spooked by my approach and darts in front of me. I swerve to the left but the boar continues to move into my path.

There is a perceived expansion of time as a mildly dramatic or traumatic event unfolds. The actual episode lasts only for a moment, but the memory of it gives the impression of it taking much longer.

I am aware of traffic in the oncoming lane, ignorant at the time that the traffic is stopped, apparently just sitting there waiting for the upcoming show of oncoming traffic coming along and hitting the wild boar. Thus we arrive on cue.

I hit the wild boar.

There is an awful feeling of impending impact, and then the actual impact, the thud of collision. The pained, feral snort from the beast as it is hit by a Chrysler Sebring convertible with two horrified faces inside trying to hang on, in fearful anticipation of the inevitable consequence of the collision.

The boar is deflected off to my left and I leave it humped in the middle of the road as I finally come to a stop on the narrow shoulder a few dozen feet beyond.

Shaken, I look in the rearview mirror to see the dazed boar slowly get to its feet and stagger, as if drunk, in short, circular steps on the asphalt. Little by little, it appears as if it is walking off the collision with the Chrysler.

I try to use a cell phone to call the Park Service office, but am unable to get a signal. I assume that they would want to know that there is an injured and possibly dangerous boar just off the road.

The whole proceeding creates a bit of a traffic jam in the opposite direction. The lead car that had been waiting for this show slowly drives by to look at me, and then moves up to the boar, now off on the other side of the road at the edge of the forest, to stop and look at the animal.

There is nothing much else I can do here, so I move on down the road with the intention of driving to the visitors center to report my unexpected meeting with a wild boar.

I realize that the front end of this rental car just smacked a 600 pound wild boar. I am instantly thankful that Jayne had purchased the extended insurance when she picked up the car, but am still concerned that I have a mangled front end.

Pulling into the next scenic overlook, I find a perfectly formed Sebring front end, with a small boar hair sticking out of the grill...

Fortunately, the collision with the wild boar was not as bad as it felt, or as it certainly could have been.

We drive on down to the Visitor’s Center and tell the young Park Ranger what happened and where.

Wild boar are a problem all over the islands, and not just because the jump out in front of tourists in rental cars. They are non-native foragers, and they tear up the land as they plow their way across the countryside.

The ranger thanks us for the information and says she knows what to do. She also says that she’s sorry we hit a wild boar.

“Thanks, so are we.” I really didn’t want to kill thing, and now I have an image of a maimed animal living out its boar life in pain.

It probably would have been best, as far as the Park Service is concerned, if we had just killed it.

Jayne reassures me that when she last saw the boar as we were driving away, the animal was looking as if it was shaking it off. A bit sore, perhaps, but okay. I too would be a bit sore if I had just been hit by a Sebring convertible.

We drive a couple miles down Crater Rim Road to the Jagger Museum and Volcano Observatory just in time for the slanting afternoon sun to break through the clouds exposing a rainbow; a wide, colorful arch stretching across the caldera.

Always a good sign.

Jayne gives me a hug and says, “See, every time there is a rainbow at Volcanoes, a wild boar is saved.”

The sun continues to sink into the horizon. The sun sets. And life goes on at Volcanoes.

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