Hawai’i


Look past the Spam, the bamboo, and staged wildlife encounters and you’ll see evidence of what the fi rst Polynesians saw.


Molten lava glows inside Pu’u O’o Crater at Volcanoes National Park.


Story and photos by Eric Lindberg H


Hot air from Pu’u O’o Crater rises 500 feet and whips through the doors-off sightseeing helicopter as I point my camera down at the bubbling calderas, steaming craters and hardened lava fi elds of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and imagine the raw, centu- ries-old past when these remote islands were rising from the ocean.


Hawai’i is the world’s most isolated populated archipelago, and the land-


scape is still changing, sometimes violently. Transformation of Hawai’ian culture is just as dramatic, with the


islands sounding, smelling and tasting vastly different from when the fi rst Polynesians arrived 1,500 years ago, or when Captain Cook sailed into these waters in 1778, or even when G.I.s disembarked 60 years ago.


The search begins


I’ve come to the state’s two youngest islands, Hawai’i and Maui, in search of the old traditions and rhythms, and to see how they coexist with modern-day Hawai’i. My quest begins in a place less subject to change than probably anywhere else in the islands—the ocean.


EnCompass January/February 2012 27


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