Hawaii Lava Lovers Celebrate 20 Years

Standing just a few feet from a slow-moving river of 2,100-degree liquid rock, Steve Young has just one thought: Get closer.

"It's bizarre," he says. "It's hot. It's dangerous. But you want to reach out and touch it. You hold back but there's something dragging you.

"I don't know why. It's absolutely dangerous, absolutely stupid and yet you want to get as close to it as possible. It seems to be that way with a lot of people."

For residents such as Young and other self-professed "lava junkies," the fiery glow of the Kilauea Volcano never gets old — not even after two decades.

Friday marks 20 years of continuous eruption of the volcano, a spectacle that has brought thousands of people per day — tourists and locals alike — to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park for a view of nature's own brand of fireworks.

The current Pu`u `O`o-Kupaianaha eruption is Kilauea's 55th eruptive episode. It ranks as the most voluminous outpouring of lava on the volcano's east rift zone in the past six centuries, according to researchers.

Young, 48, is one of the 3,000 scattered residents of this appropriately named volcano-top hamlet, Volcano. He has shot hundreds of pictures from dozens of locations throughout the park since he moved here in September 1982, just four months before the current eruption started.

"In 20 years I haven't gotten bored with it," he said. "How can you? I don't know what it's going to do tomorrow."

Evidence of that can be seen in the photos he's taken of the volcano and posted online at www.volcanovillage.com.

"It's always different," he said. "No matter when I go down it's always different."

Count photographer David Jordan as another one of the enthusiasts who never gets tired of the show. In fact, it's the name of a photographic Web site he started in August: www.lavajunkie.com.

Jordan, 42, is out at the flows almost every day before dawn, getting so close to the fiery lava that his photos alone seem to generate heat.

"I hope they get some small feeling of what that moment is like," he says of people who view his pictures. "The visitors, a lot of them, come down in the daytime and the colors are gone. The conditions are gone, and they leave disappointed because they didn't see what they expected to see.

"A lot of visitors aren't in a position, time wise or physically, to hike to where you need to go to to get some of these shots."

For Don Swanson, scientist in charge at the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, going out to the lava isn't a hobby, but his job. Still, he can understand the attraction.

"It's just a really positive influence to be able to get up in the morning or go down in the evening and see lava," he said. "People wonder at it, marvel at it. It's just something to think about and contemplate."

For Young, who's lived all over the United States from Chicago to San Francisco to Alaska, the Big Island holds an attraction like no other.

"Until I'd seen the volcano, in my eyes the Northern Lights was like the neat thing to see," he said.

"This is just absolutely wild. It's got noise, it's got smell, it's got feel, touch. It's got everything. It's got that realm of you don't know what's going to happen. It's just raw.

"It's a real rush."

By B.J. Reyes