Puna Lava Patterns

Roamed around the Puna district on the Big Island yesterday. The region has been shaped by lava flows both ancient and recent.  This pic is at Kehena Beach, a black sand beauty created by a 1955 lava flow.

This is a 1990 lava flow at Kalapana, about five miles from Kehena.  I was here in March of that year, and at dusk I could see the lava glowing as it oozed down a distant mountainside.  A few months later the flow buried most of the village of Kalapana, a historic Hawaiian cultural spot.  It's a fairly rainy area, and revegetation is well underway, helped in spots by the local residents.

A pahoehoe lava landscape.

Pahoehoe is a viscous lava that flows like molasses, creating rich, varied shapes.  As the lava hardens it cracks, giving soil a chance to collect in the fissures and harbor new plant life.

The locals have added artwork to the Pahoehoe.

It's a warm, windy area, but in spots new coconut palms are thriving.

The 1990 lava flow buried a famed black sand beach at Kaimu, but created a new beach several hundred yards to the south, on new land added by Madam Pele.  Much of the beach has now been eroded by pounding surf but some sand remains, dotted with palms planted by the locals.

Black lava meets blue sea.

This area of the lava landscape looks fresh.  Blow up the pic and you can see steam plumes on the far hillsides, where lava continues to flow downslope from the Pu'u O'o cone out of sight to the left.  This area could be recovered by lava at any time...or not again for thousands of years.

Coco palms and black sand.

The palms are planted simply by putting a coconut into the sand.

The Americans basically seized Hawaii from the Hawaiians in the 1890s for imperialistic and strategic reasons.  It had been an independent kingdom for most of the 19th century, and a collection of island kingdoms for a long time before that.  Some Hawaiians would like their state to be an independent country again.  Given the current regime in Washington, I'm sure the number of independence advocates here is growing.  

A striking plant in the lava.

This lava is only three years old.  In 2014 a flow from Pu'u O'o moved toward Pahoa while I was vacationing here.  The lava reached the outskirts of town, which had not seen a lava flow since 1840.  The lava forced the closure of several businesses and destroyed one house before coming to a halt just a quarter mile or so from the only highway that leads out of the entire Puna district.  It's a wet area so revegetation is already under way.

Another shot of the lava near Pahoa.  A couple of gravel escape roads have been bulldozed through the jungle so people will be able to drive out of Puna in the event of another lava flow cutting the main highway.

These are lava trees near Pahoa.  A 1790 eruption moved through a forest of large ohia trees; the lava enveloped the moist trees and stuck to the trunks as it cooled.  The wood in the trunks later burned or rotted away...so some of these formations are hollow.

A cool huge funky leaf.