This is not genealogy, but it is history…….. the history of our planet………. and aren’t history and genealogy partners???? We were just in Hawaii (on the Big Island of Hawaii) where we went for February sunshine and to escape the winter snow, gray and gloom. We learned some fascinating geologic history of these Pacific Islands. They move at the fast rate (so say geologists) of 4 inches per year in a northwesternly direction over a hot spot welling up from the ocean floor. It is from these hot spots that Hawaii was formed and is still being formed……… as in the recent lava flows from Kilauea volcano. This means that in a bezillion years Kilauea volcano will be a quiet and interesting lava-rock place. And Loih’i is the next island-to-be in the chain, rising from the ocean floor off the southeastern shores of the Big Island and said to surface in 10,000 years. (Wags on the Internet are already staking out beach-front land claims.)
In a special sense, it was like seeing Creation to stand there and watch the smaller Halema’uma’u Crater in the vast Kilauea Crater belching and billowing white smoke and knowing there was a boiling lava pit that was parent to that rising column of steam. It was also like Creation to stand at the end of Highway 137 at the Kalapana point (where the town was) and from a safe 2-mile viewpoint look up and see the lava flowing over the pali (cliffs) in its glide to the sea, destroying everything in its path.
None of my ancestors were Hawaiian, Polynesian or Asian in any way. But knowing and believing that “no man is an island,” what happens there has always impacted mankind here. And that means my ancestors and yours too.
(I posted more cool photos on my blog: www.tikasthoughtsandteachings.blogspot.com )
Donna, aka Mother Hen, until next week.