The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I’ve heard it said that Camano Island is the fourth largest island in America. The continental America anyway. We’re on the biggest island in all of America this week, Hawaii. 13,800 foot volcano – above sea level – taller than Everest if you count the distance to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, the entire island black cinder spewed from the lava still forming the island. The volcanoes divide the island in half, one side dry, the other side with the rainiest city in the United States, Hilo. Right now we’re in Hilo. And yeah, it rains a bit.

If you think of Hawaii as a lush, tropical jungle of a place, you’d be right. But only half the time. Most of it so far is fairly barren, lava fields without much vegetation, volcanic mountains sides devoid of trees, long stretches of semi-arid countryside. Maybe what you’d expect from the top of a huge mountain building up from the ocean.

The Big Island, Hawaii, is the largest island in the chain, but the sense you have here is these islands are small outposts on the planet far far from anything else, pinpoints on a map smack dab in the middle of the Pacific. If you were the type who wanted to escape, this might look like a likely candidate.

Maybe I’ve lived too long on an island with an easy escape route, but living here with volcanoes still active nearby or right underneath, maybe it’s a little too primal, still unformed, altogether too close to the crater’s edge for my comfort level. Sort of like living in Pompeii far out in the Aegean Sea with nothing else close by. Pele looks like an angry god, not a kindly one, breathing all the time right down my neck.

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