I once met a woman who turned her back on the sea. Her feet were badly burned, but the scarring was light.
She credits thick, goopy layers of aloe, frequently applied fresh from the plant.
See her sitting, feet propped on a coffee table on her lanai. Housebound for weeks because she is unable to walk. She has nothing to do but break arms off the aloe plants her friends have sent, slather the goo thickly until her poor scalded feet look as they would through a few inches of clear, wavery water.
She is the one who warned me: The ocean will slap you around. Never turn your back.
She was a ranger in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. She worked at the Wahaula heiau, an old temple. In 1990, lava surrounded the temple and ran into the sea. When lava flows slowly, it cools as it goes, so that you get a hard shell with a river flowing beneath it.
The hard shell is not reliable.
The lava parted and flowed around the temple, leaving it unharmed. Perhaps she thought it was charmed, and so by extension was she.
On her day off, she walked out into the sea on the hard shell of lava. She carried a stick. She intended to go to the end of the flow, where the lava was fresh and the crust thin. Thrust the stick through the shell, scoop up some lava, drop it into the tin can she carried.
She would have a special gift to show her tourists: The newest land on earth!
All went according to plan. Except, that to thrust the stick, she had to take her eyes off the sea.
Big wave!
Tumble!
The hard shell cracks. The charm breaks.
By the time I met her, her feet were healed and lightly scarred, and all this was no more than a story she enjoyed telling to tourists.
And underneath, this:
The hard shell cracks. The charm breaks. Never turn your back.
Which translates to this:
Trust nothing. The earth opens and swallows. Nothing is solid, everything is real.
By awareness matter coheres. Be vigilant. When your mind wanders, everything does.
One measures a circle beginning anywhere.
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http://www.starbulletin.com/97/08/11/news/story1.html
Lava breached the walls of the Big Island's historic Wahaula heiau this morning and was expected by the end of the day to cover the 800-year-old Hawaiian temple, which is believed to once have been a place for human sacrifice.
Jim Martin, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park superintendent, said the pahoehoe stream of lava climbed over the heiau's back wall at 3 this morning and quickly filled up the floor.
By 7:30 a.m. a good portion of the heiau was covered by the lava, which Martin described as being "fairly fluid." He expected the entire structure to be covered by this evening.
... The earth opens and swallows. Nothing is solid, everything is real. By your awareness matter coeheres. Never turn your back.
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