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THE LAST LAVA FLOW

Ribbons of cascading, congealed 'a'a lava mark the location of what historian Inez Ashdown called the Paea o Kanaio Flow, Maui's most recent volcanic eruption. The flow is popularly considered to have occurred around 1790. (As the Hawaiians had no written language prior to the 19th century, no one recorded this event on paper, of course.)

Calculating the approximate date of this eruption has provided a bit of fun over the years. Newspaperman L. A. Thurston went through a lot of head-scratching and number-crunching to come up with the estimate of 1750. He based that on a couple of stories he had garnered over the years of wandering around the islands.

Father Bailey, an American missionary who arrived on Maui in 1841, told Thurston that he had asked the natives about the fresh-looking lava flow and was told that their grandparents had seen it happening. Bailey said the natives told him that a woman and child had been surrounded by the flow but managed to escape once it had cooled. Thurston decided that Father Bailey's story probably pinpointed the year of the eruption as being around 1742.

Years later a certain Chinese-Hawaiian cowboy Charlie Ako talked to Thurston during one of his Maui adventures. Charlie said his father-in-law's grandfather had seen the eruption when he was "a boy big enough to carry two coconuts from the sea to the upper road." (This distance was around four miles and a 2,000 foot climb). Charlie's father-in-law was 92 years old when he died in 1905. Thurston guess-timated the age of the kid as being around 10 years old, assumed that a generation was probably about 33 years, hemmed and hawed, and came up with the year 1757.

Thurston then took the average between the two dates and came up with the year 1750. Go figure!

He never did find more accurate information about the last Maui lava flow. He says in his 1924 article for the Honolulu Advertiser, "If anyone can direct me to any other record or evidence or tradition or recent volcanic activity on Maui, I will accept and publish it gratefully."

The more usual 1790 date found in most guide books was deduced as recently as 1965 from the study of two navigators' maps. That of La Perouse (1786) indicated a broad bay in the area. That of Vancouver (1793) clearly marked a rounded peninsula, with the lava flow clearly showing. Split the dates, and you have 1790. Maybe.

The problem with this whole scenerio is that La Perouse probably flunked Cartography 101. He was such a terrible map-maker that it's pretty hard to recognize the islands using his maps.
 
And then there's the technological approach. Recent carbon-14 dating techniques put the eruption closer to about 400 to 500 years ago, around 1490. It's been pointed out to the doubting Thomases that when volcanologists analyze the crystals in the lava, they can somehow or other check on the flow of the earth's ever-changing magnetic fields. The crystals from the Paea Flow just don't match the ones from the lava in the flow out of the western slope of Hualalai on the Big Island, which was seen and recorded in 1801. Hmmm.

The Paea Flow forms the western side of Keoneoio Bay, now known as La Perouse Bay. Tradition has it that the volcano goddess Pele was offended by the lack of hospitality (or, perhaps, the inability to recognize her) shown by a family who lived at the point in Honuaula where the flow originated.

This family raised chickens and the husband and wife told everyone they had made a vow that no one should have one of the birds until some of them had been sacrificed to the goddess. They had not made a move to sacrifice any of the chickens to the goddess, however, and, as luck would have it, an old woman appeared and said she was hungry. She asked for a bird to eat and the couple replied that they couldn't give her a chicken because of their vow. Apparently, it was their standard answer to hungry travelers. The old woman, of course, was Pele and she was enraged. She produced a lava flow on the spot.

The mother seized her little girl and ran for the hills. Pele seized the woman and split her in two, turning her and her child into stone. The goddess fixed the halves, one on each side of the spot where the lava was pouring from the ground.

Meanwhile, the father grabbed his son and started running with him for the coast, intending to swim across the channel for safety to the island of Kahoolawe, some eight miles away. He ran down the hill for and, reaching the beach, plunged into the ocean with his son. He was several hundred feet from the shore when Pele arrived at the head of her lava flow. She threw rocks at them, hitting and killing both the father and the son. Then she turned both of them to stone. To this day, the stones can be seen - a big rock and a little one - rising up from the sea, several hundred feet from shore.

Inez Ashdown tells another legend. Pele, in her guise of a beautiful young woman, appeared to a handsome young man named Paea (Flint) who lived in Kanaio near Puu Mahoe (Twin Hill). Paea recognized the goddess by her fiery eyes and politely, but firmly refused her, telling her he loved his sweetheart, Kalua (The enjoyment).

Taking his leave of the furious goddess, Paea quickly found Kalua and told her they had to run away from the wrath of the goddess. They headed towards Keoneoio where Paea kept his canoe and fishing gear near the sacred fishponds.

Says Inez, "Pele caught the two mortals just below Ana Muki (the Cave of Whispering Spirits) near Puu Mahoe. Today Paea's head and torso form the Poo Kanaka (Man's Head) stone, which is shaped by the map of Maui and can be seen just above the road which leads from Ulupalakua to Kanaio Village.

"The rest of his body forms Pohaku Paea (Stone Paea) which is just next to the remains of the fish ponds at La Perouse Bay....

"Pele caught Kalua at Puu Na'i-o (Hill of Conquest) and turned her into a ridge below the hill called Puu Kalua-lapa."


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Standard English: I don't understand; this is very confusing.
Braddah-Nics: Wo, brah! I no unnahstan'.  Dis kine stay kapakahi.

Standard English: Poor Sheila. It looks like she's not going to get any satisfaction.
Braddah-Nics: Auwe, dat Sheila. She stay sucking wind!

Standard English: Oh, how marvelous for you! Congratulations!
Braddah-Nics: Eh! All ri-i-i-ight!

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Guava Jelly
Yield: 1 Servings

2 lb Fully ripe guavas
2 1/2 cup Water
1/2 cup Lemon juice; strained
7 cup Sugar
1/2 each Bottle pectin

** To extract juice **
Slice guavas thinly. Add water and simmer, covered, 5 minutes. Then
crush fruit thoroughly with a potato masher. Place in a jelly bag and
squeeze out juice into a pan. Measure 3 1/2 cups into a very large
saucepan.

** To make Jelly **
Add strained lemon juice to guava juice. For a deeper bronze
jelly, add a few drops red food coloring. Add sugar, mixing well.
Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. When boil is reached, stir in
pectin. Then bring to a full boil again and boil hard 1 minute,
stirring. Remove from heat. Skim off foam with a metal spoon, and
pour quickly into hot sterilized glasses or jars. Cover at once with
lids or paraffin. Fills 10 medium glasses.

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Kihei -

Kihei's near-constant sunshine and the fringe of sandy beaches -- some of the loveliest on the island -- along its six-mile-long stretch on Maui's southwest coast continues to attract avid sun- and sand-worshippers. The beaches have incredible views of Lanai and Kahoolawe as well as West Maui. At sunset, the orange orb of the sun seems to hang for a long time over the water before sliding gently into the sea. The breezes off the ocean during the late afternoon and early twilight hours bring a cooling, welcome relief from the heat of the day.
 
If you want to be strictly accurate, the original "Kihei" was a single village located near the Kihei Wharf, across from Suda Store. The next villages over were Kalepolepo and Kama'ole, which are now names for beaches along the South Kihei Road.
 
The area that we call Kihei now (bounded to the north by Maalaea Bay and to the south by the Wailea resort) was once a long stretch of undeveloped beaches with an abundance of scrubby plants and thorny kiawe (mesquite) trees and panini cacti. Along this stretch there was a scattering of homes, a few small stores and a couple of churches. Local families often camped overnight at the many beaches and fishermen had their favorite spots up and down the coast. The living was slow and easy, and land was not worth much money since, after all, you couldn't grow much produce here. There just wasn't enough rain.
 
In the 1960s and 1970s Maui was economically depressed. The young people were leaving the island to find their fortunes elsewhere and population was dwindling. Tourism seemed to be the answer, and tourists liked beaches. Kihei had lots and lots of beautiful beaches.
 
Part of the problem was that the tracts of land in Kihei was independently owned and there was no one general management system to control the rampant development that resulted. Private developers constructed high-rise condominiums along the shoreline. Wealthy folks began building million-dollar homes. Interspersed between the condos and the fancy houses were subdivision tracts -- some well-planned and others not -- for ordinary folks as well as strip malls and shopping centers. Every developer had his own vision and the result was a mishmash of dreams.
 
While it can be said that each developer did pretty much as he pleased, and the result is sometimes less than aesthetically pleasing, there are also a number of comfortable condominium complexes as well as houses that are well-designed and very attractive scattered throughout the area.  
 
The newer Piilani Highway (Highway 31), above South Kihei Road and running parallel to it, was constructed to help alleviate the constant traffic congestion along South Kihei Road. Five crossroads connect the two, and the building continues along this other thoroughfare as well.

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