Volcano of Love

My wife and I decided to drive to Mount Kilauea, an active volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, because, quite frankly, we were bored.

It was our first anniversary, but relaxation, we’d found, had its limitations. A couple of days bathed in the breezes, surf and equatorial balm of paradise eventually just feels windy, wet and oppressively hot. Kilauea promised a close-up of honest to God flowing lava, plumes of noxious steam and dramatic undulating hardened flows from the past twenty-two years of constant eruption – all a mere two hours drive from our hotel. It was at least a change of scenery.

Not unusually, our first year of marriage taught us a lot about each other’s uniqueness. She, for example, is incapable of completely closing any drawer in the house. I, on the other hand, am incapable of braking the car gently. That’s fine. These are the ingredients that make the flavorful stew of marriage the tasty dish it is. Overcook those ingredients, however, and the meal can take on more…complexity.

Another of our differences is that I like a little fresh air when I’m driving. Window down, sunroof open, something to relieve the claustrophobia of the car. My wife, believe it or not, does not enjoy a breeze, as it turns her beautiful blonde locks into a thousand tiny whips that lash at the alabaster skin of her face.

When the valet brought our convertible around, he’d courteously put the roof down. Looking at me over her sunglasses as we got into the car, my wife said, “It’s going to be too much.” I pushed the button to put the top back up, whining, “Why did we rent a convertible if we’re not going to convert it?”

That’s when the buzzing started that day. The buzzing in my head had been surprising me on and off all year but was relentless on this trip. It emanated from deep within me, rumbling way inside where all the passion was, ever threatening to crack out of me. The buzzing was the fuel that propelled husbands around the world to spend hollow hours on the internet looking at pornography, drove their eyes against all resistance and gentlemanly politeness down toward another woman’s cleavage, took them on vacant out-of-body fantasies triggered by a lower back tattoo or a navel-ring or an eyebrow. In me, the buzzing insisted that a mistake was made, that I wasn’t built for marriage, that there was a world of women I’d not yet slept with, that I was doomed to repeat the sins of my father: divorcing, becoming lost in overwhelming addiction, ending alone and crippled in an assisted living home. It was, impossibly, thoroughly comforting.

After a half-hour of silence accompanied by the full force of the car’s air conditioner, my wife turned it off. “Too cold,” she said. “I’m dying,” I responded. She ignored me and started to read from the volcano literature given to us by the hotel. “’VERY IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION YOU NEED TO KNOW!!! Volcanic Fumes: All persons should avoid breathing these fumes. They contain hydrochloric acid and glass particles.’ Are we sure we want to do this?” she asked.
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.
“’Coastline collapse,” she continued. “’Unstable new land, called a ‘bench’ is formed where lava enters the ocean. It can collapse into the sea without warning. In 1993, one person died when the half-acre bench he was standing on collapsed. In 1998, another person disappeared into the fume cloud created by a collapsed bench. He is still missing and presumed dead-‘ Ok, I’m getting carsick.”

That’s another of my wife’s peculiarities. Can’t read in the car. Neither can I, honestly, but who’s gonna read the directions when I’m driving? When I read – or talk on my cell phone, for that matter - I get yelled at for risking our lives. None of this would be a problem if my wife were someone else. Someone who didn’t get sick while reading in the car. Someone who didn’t mind the wind blowing through her hair a little.

But we’re a stubborn couple, my wife and I. I took out my mental scorecard and golf pencil. “You want to go back?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “You want to see the volcano, we should see the volcano.”
“But you don’t want to see it,” I interpreted.
“Yeah, sure, it’ll be interesting.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “You’re gonna totally resent me for going to see this thing.”
“Don’t tell me how I feel,” she countered. “That really pisses me off.”
“But I’m right! Just say you don’t want to see the volcano.”
“You know what, Adam,” she said. “Fuck you.”

I pulled the car over quickly, braking hard on the shoulder. “You don’t get to say ‘fuck you,’’” I said. Husband: 1; Wife: 0.
“You don’t get to play games with my head,” she answered. Wife: 1.
“You don’t get to say ‘fuck you.’ You can say anything else, but not that.”
“Fine,” she said, defeated. Husband: 2. Then, her face turned toward the passenger side window, she nearly whispered, “Let’s just go to the volcano.” Though she was trying very hard to keep it from me, I knew she was crying. Wife: 2.

At the summit Visitor’s Center, they told us how to get a good view of the lava, 30 minutes down Chain of Craters Road on the other side of the volcano to the water’s edge. “Lava’s flowing pretty good, today,” the ranger said.
“It better be,” I muttered.

The view down the side of the volcano was spectacular. We could see for miles straight to the gradually expanding boundary of coastline that swallowed two people in the 90’s.
“Check it out,” I said, pointing to a steam cloud at the coast.
“Car,” my wife warned. “Car!”
I swerved back onto our side of the road, as the oncoming car honked past us. “Sorry,” I waved to no one.
A cloud of steam now blasting from her nostrils, my wife growled a little while she stared straight ahead. “What?” I asked.
“I hate it when you do that.”
“Look out the window?”
Silence. I thought I could feel the steering wheel crack a little bit under my grip.

Mount Kilauea is home to Pele, goddess of fire and violence. Hawaiian tradition depicts her as pretty much constantly pissed off, punishing the people of Hawaii for not behaving the way she’d like. Legend has it she ended up on Hawaii because her father exiled her there for having an out-of-control temper while she fought with her sister. Her poetic name, ka wahine ‘ai honua, means ‘woman who devours the land.’

We parked about a mile from the ranger’s hut and the beginning of the lava field.
Walking in silence along the straight two-lane road with so many others toward the site, we must have looked like refugees in reverse, knowing only that our destination was destruction.

Because she’s shorter than I am, I usually have to slow down when we walk so my wife can keep up with me. But I was in no mood to concede anything, so I walked without regard to her for five solid minutes. When I finally turned around, she was twenty feet behind me. I waited impatiently, staring her down, until she walked right past me without so much as even a glance.

The buzzing returned then, flooding my mind with hundreds of images of women I didn’t know. Women I’d never get to sleep with because of her. I felt like my father in the early 80’s, his mirrored sunglasses the perfect disguise for his furtive eyes, constantly on the move for an ass or a nipple. Now the buzzing was fulfilling its true purpose: Shame. On the heels of guilt, mixed with love, the pressure of it all would soon erupt in a fountain of resentment for my wife the way I’d resented every other woman in my life before her.

The even pavement stopped suddenly, blocked by a mound of hardened silver-grey lava 15 feet tall. Beyond it was a sea of rock that extended for miles. As we picked our way across it, my wife suddenly slipped on the smooth rock and we reached for each other, holding on hard so she wouldn’t fall. “This is freaking me out,” she said. Stopping to drink from our sole water bottle, we felt the full heat of the sun from above but also the cooling lava from below. There was a sound, too: a faint crackling like Rice Crispies, only it was everywhere. Around our feet, little flakes of silver popped from the ground.

“Are your feet hot?” my wife asked.
“I should have put that sunscreen on, like you told me to,” I realized.
“Do you hear a crackling sound?”

She kissed me before she headed back to the car, admitting defeat. I moved on alone, the heat more intense through my shoes. After just a few steps, I had to stop. Not six feet from where I was standing, a crack in the shiny surface revealed a deep orange glow from which an impossible temperature radiated. I easily could have stepped in it if I wasn’t paying attention. ‘Boy that would show my wife, wouldn’t it?’ I thought. ‘My leg going up in flames?’

But that thought was soon vaporized by the hypnotic effect of the planet’s insides. I’d never witnessed a thing so simple, so completely pure. I was staring into all of our origins, all of our cores. I felt Pele’s pull. This was the very stuff of which my inside buzzing was made: volatile, destructive, ever-threatening to engulf me and anyone near me in searing flame.

The heat from above and below actually burned a little. Was this all of Pele’s rage made manifest? Was it my roiling manhood threatening to destroy the family I’d just begun building? Or was I instead staring at the primal power of happiness? Explosive, frightening, overwhelming happiness – constantly changing form, essential for growth, the antidote to fear. Yes, it made me want to run. But how often had I run from happiness before, like so much lava down a mountainside? Was not my buzzing simply the ecstasy of finally being one with another? Pele might have been a devourer of land, but she also created the land. What if everyone was wrong about her? She wasn’t pissed off; she was alive and loving it. Her fire was Joy; not rage. She was ecstatic. Just then, behind me, an enormous steam cloud blasted from the edge of the island.

I returned to my wife waiting at the car. The roof was down. “You’re sunburned,” she said, gently palming my forehead. I smiled. “I know.”

We rode in silence in the car, back up Chain of Craters Road, over Kilauea, through the mist. I took her hand in mine. She squeezed it a little. I knew this feeling. The wind was rushing past us, the sun was setting, I was scared, and we were together.