Chasing Lava as the Earth Shifts

"Land is one of those things that can disappear even as you see it. It falls away beneath you, becoming merely the ground under your feet, because you're thinking about where you're going, or a place slowly blurring out of focus from the airplane window. Land is a primal word, primordial even, like lava. And it is a loaded word if, say, you're Indigenous or descend from a people whose land was taken from them."

"But 80 percent of land is made by volcanic activity-and the only place where you can see that new land being made is at a volcano. Kilauea, a volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, is prolific in this sense. It grew 500 acres during its continuous eruption from 1983 to 2018, which was more of a steady leak until it finally turned dramatic in May of 2018, when the Puʻuʻōʻō vent collapsed."

Land can become invisible when attention shifts, reducing place to merely ground underfoot or a blurred view from an airplane. Land holds primordial resonance and carries heavy meaning for Indigenous people and descendants of dispossessed populations. Approximately eighty percent of land originates from volcanic activity, and new land formation is visible at volcanoes like Kilauea. Kilauea expanded by five hundred acres during its eruption from 1983 to 2018, becoming sudden in May 2018 with the Puʻuʻōʻō vent collapse, prompting observations that maps were changing faster than they could be drawn. A family relocated to Hawaii seeking healing from a child's persistent skin condition, splitting time between Oakland and Maui.

Read at Conde Nast Traveler