The Road to Ruins

Hawaii. Now where were we? Wait! I know…

After some heel-dragging of the "Ida know, what do you wanna do?" variety, we finally grabbed our packs and headed up the trail. The sunlight was angling more sharply now—on its way toward setting, but taking its time about it. Beneath the trees, the shadows were getting heavy. It took my eyes a minute to adjust. The dimness made it seem later than it really was. The little blots of sunlight that bled through the shadows shifted and moved about. It was pleasant, dreamlike.

We weren't very far into the woods when we heard someone tramping in front of us. I expected it to be a stranger, and it was difficult to be sure, but after a moment I recognized Stefan. He was lugging his pack, and looked as sprightly as ever

After a brief greeting, Stefan asked us what we thought of the crater. I felt too dazed to verbalize, but he was clearly waiting for an answer, as he led us into the parking lot. Niko, of course, said it was O.K or something to that effect. I still found it difficult to form words. It was all too disorienting, and Stefan seemed to think that Niko & I understood what procedure we would be following from this point on. Maybe he'd communicated it to Niko, but all I'd ever heard was a request that I bring his kid up to the park, and if I had extra time, to shuttle him around the crater; (which I would enjoy as well, I was told). Then I would meet Stefan at 5 p.m., Niko in tow, in the parking lot near the trailhead, from whence we would all depart to see the lava flow. (I had only the vaguest idea of where the lava was flowing, BTW, 'tho I coulda figured it out if I'd looked at the map.) That was all I’d been asked or told. But OK, some people aren't real adept with the whole communication biz, no matter what language you or they are speaking. (Or not.) (Or something.)

So Stefan headed over to his Jeep and began re-arranging the contents of his backpack, adding some materials he thought he might need for his camp on Mauna Loa. He asked me if I had water. I said that I did. He didn't ask how much I was carrying, but I had a 1.5 liter bottle in my pack. Being the avid hiker that he is, I suspect he would've thought I was traveling a little light. So was he 'tho, as I’d find out later.

What followed was another one of those annoying and increasingly familiar moments in which Stefan either believed, falsely, that he'd explained his wishes to me before or that I would just intuitively understand: Seems that he wanted me to drive us to the edge of the lava field whereat we would be obliged to begin hiking toward the lava flow. I'd been in the goddamn car enough that I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of more driving, but recognized that, yeah, we weren't all gonna fit in his jeep, esp. w/ all his camp gear. So I guess his expectations were warranted after all, assuming I wasn’t kinda dumb. (And here’s an object lesson in why you shouldn’t assume.)

So off we did drive up Chain of Craters road and away from the caldera and towards the Pacific in the south. Along the way, Stefan and I made small talk. Turns out he's a meteorologist, specializing in climate change. His job necessitated frequent travel all over the place. Poor fucker.

As I said before, he didn't seem particularly interested in the realities of my own job, which was a relief because it's boring as hell. Instead he asked me a buncha questions about my writing, the drawings I'd been making, my guitar, etc. He was making me out to be a real Renaissance Man and complimenting on my evident gifts. I wasn't sure how he'd been able to evaluate my "gifts" at all—unless he saw more in that rudimentary sketch of the mountains than I did. Cynic that I am, I thought he mighta been kissing my ass a little—prob. to placate me for all the horseshit I'd been obliged to do. 'Tho again I don't know why he'd have thought I needed placating.

I may be bitching a lot here, but at the time, I wasn't really upset, and to the extent that I was irritated, I don't think it showed much. I just think that's how this guy is: inclined to curry the goodwill of everyone around him. But then I may be unfair—at least partially. Maybe he’s just capable of what’s seeing what’s good or interesting in other people—an area in which I myself am not gifted, but I try.

As we drove, Stefan maintained this running travelogue, noting the signs of various volcanic phenomena. I was impressed, but he told me he didn't want to take too much credit for his knowledge. Seems he'd just asked a lotta rangers a lotta questions—here, and around Mauna Loa, where he was planning on setting up camp.

As you drive along Chain of Craters Road, the hardened lava your moving over represents several past eruptions. Its texture ranges from smooth, brittle sheets to thick, dense solid rock. Its color varies from reddish-brown through a deep chocolate black to a grayer, blue shade of black. Occasionally you find these peculiar glass-like chunks of brightly colored rock—greens or reds or golds. The landscape is bizarre and ever-shifting. You pass steaming craters, uneven rock formations, and dry, scrubby vegetation.

The drive takes a while, but seems to go very quickly. Stefan and I kept just staring at the shit around us. (Niko was again engaged with his writing.) Stefan would giggle and hop around in his seat, while I just watched, amazed.

At some point, the road ran up against the sea and curved back east along the cliffs that lined the water. Not long after that, I realized I wasn't in a national park at all, but rather was looking for a parking spot outside a major rock concert. There was that endless line of cars you always find at a large rock show, resting along both sides of the road with people milling about them, but mostly headed in the direction the cars were facing. Shit! And I didn't even know who I was gonna be seeing! And then something really frightening occurred to me. Now I ain't a kraut-hater when it comes to contemporary popular music. I like Kraftwerk and Oval and Einsturzende Neubaten and Neu! and pale and frog-croaking Nico—who should not be confused w/ my current traveling companion.

But so like OK, I was with krauts—and much as you might not wanna generalize, they do have these weird musical predilections. Some of the performers above support this thesis, I'd say. Worse, part of my present company had already shown himself to be, well, a bit eccentric when it came to the toonz he liked. Riverdance! Holy shit! I might be going to see Riverdance! As soon as that occurred to me, I was tryin' to find my false tooth that contained that cyanide capsule, y'know, for just this sorta fatally hopeless situation. But then I remembered that I didn't have no false teeth nor deadly cyanide capsules, and that in fact that was just some shit that happened in a movie or 2 I saw once.

So I was screwed. I was gonna hafta sit through Riverdance. And like, you know these krauts would stay for the whole thing, and like now I was responsible for the assholes cuz they'd coerced me into driving them 45 min. into this volcanic desert, and like what was I gonna do now, leave 'em there?

Sure, they could prob. hitch a ride home w/ some other Riverdance enthusiasts. (And if so, I would rather be a fly on the wall of a shithouse belonging to Liz Phair—whose hygienic habits we already know are obscene—than I would be a fly on the walla that fucking car. They'd prob., like, compare and contrast the relative strengths and weaknesses of all these various performances of Riverdance that they'd seen and like who had the best tap shoes and which guy was the gayest and wouldn't you like to lap away at his asshole to get him all good and loosened for yr. post show dressing room assault??? Huh wouldntcha?????

And Stefan would squirm around all girly like, talkin' about how he was gonna do all these really unpleasant German type things to the guy like shit on him and piss on him and write words on him with earwax and braid his nose (not his pubic) hair and maybe stick a paper towel tube up his urethra and pour lemon juice in there—which not only hurts like hell but makes yr. piss even more yellow—and but then he'd prob. make the guy sculpt things out of years of accumulated toe jam that he keeps in a jar in his backpack and also make him eat a kidney stone he'd passed—the guy couldn't bite it neither like sometimes how you want to bite a mint, but you know you should suck it to make it last longer even tho it’s less fun, well this guy'd have to do the same thing w/ this kidney stone and that would take who the fuck knows how long? Maybe kidney stones don't decay any faster than bones, which would mean that the guy would prob. be long dead and have that stone still decomposing in his skeletal puss till Judgment Day? And that'd be really embarrassing I mean if there really was a Judgment Day cuzz how like all the dead bodies there are supposed to rise up or something, and this guy'd rise up sucking on another dude's kidney stone, & all the other cadavers would be pausin' periodically in the midst of their post-apocalyptic rapture or terror or some shit to laff at him for being such a punk that not only was he in Riverdance, for fuck’s sake, but like he was suckin' this kidney stone!!! And the poor jerk would still hafta keep suckin', cuz Stefan's rotted remains would be standing right next to him with a moth-eaten riding crop, (don't ask me how much or even why a riding crop could hurt you if you were like mostly a rotting bag a bones,) making sure he kept sucking on it. And what would it taste like at that point??? I guess the guy wouldn't prob. have entirely if at all functional taste buds by that time. So but, wait, what the fuck would it taste like in the first place???

I never passed a kidney stone, but I vow that if I ever do I'll pluck it from its watery resting place and begin workin' on it in hopes that at Judgment Day when I'm called on to explain all the shit I did, I can at least go hey look! I figured out whatta kidney stone tastes like. That's gotta be worth something, right? And but I'm guessing it tastes sorta like nut sack sweat combined with myrrh and incense and Robotussin, (which I drink alla time, cuz it gets me real high). And but you could maybe use it in a recipe or 2. Not too many, cuz unless we can get some dudes to sit around repeatedly passing kidney stones, they're prob. not gonna turn up too often. But they'd be kinda a delicacy that way and besides you could prob. get some poor guys in the 3rd and even 1st worlds to do that cuz they're gonna get exploited anyway, so why not make ‘em pass a buncha stones alla time? Whazzat you say? That's not funny? Well, who the fuck said I was tryin' to be funny? Not me. Now I'm not sure if a dude can even pass more than one kidney stone, but like say if you did that'd create a whole new industry, and that's good right? Kidney Stone Farming.

Don't worry, we could do it free range style? OK??? And y'know industry's what drives the economy and that's good for some why or other. And it uplifts us all. All our leaders agree on that, so we're stuck w/ it anyway. ‘Cuz I'm doubting there's gonna be any mass uprising till, oh, maybe Judgment Day, (there's yr. fucking mass uprising!!) and we've already discussed what that'll be like vis-à-vis this whole kidney stone thing...

Anyway...

But so there were long lines of cars on either side of the road, and slow animal that it is, my brain was trying to make sense of it. Stefan was giggling away knowingly. He'd had a feeling it would be like this, he said. I hadn't.

My mind finally clicked. Here was a concept with which it was all too familiar: we needed to find a parking spot. I cruised slowly along the line of cars, but it was like looking for a spot in Wrigleyville during a weekend Cubs game. A little farther up was a woman in a park ranger shirt—complete with tie—was standing in the middle of the road. She was talking to the people who were milling about. She walked directly toward us, so I rolled down my window.

For a moment I thought maybe the eruption had gathered some steam, and that she was going to tell us it to highball it back up the road. The eruption’s been fucking with the coastline all along there, reshaping it on a, like, daily basis. I started having this visions of panicked crowds from Toho Pictures. Funny but not completely ridiculous. Lava had almost wiped out Hilo not too far back there. But being as no one was running or screaming I decided it was more likely that we'd arrived too late. Nothing had been said about set hours of park operation, so I was gonna ask her if we could still hike out to see the lava.

I always expect people in uniforms to be assholes for some reason, even 'tho it seems to be true about 50/50. (Same odds you get w/ a plain clothes type person in my experience.) She was not at all formal or unfriendly. She told me that if I could find a spot to park, we were free to head on out. The only request she made was that we park on the roadside, not off in the lava nearby.

Ha but OK, while the ranger was coo’, the situation was not quite so much. I've lived in Chicago for 13 years. By now, you might think I'd be aces at parallel parking. You would be wrong. I suck at parallel parking. Fact of the matter is if I can take the L somewhere I usually do. I am aces at navigating the subway system. When it starts getting into the need for buses 'tho, I'll usually opt for the car. 'And ‘tho there are, of course, plenty of work situations in which I hafta drive, here, faced w/ these little tiny gaps that might be construable as a parking spots, if you were good at the shit, I was lost.

Finally Stefan offered to park the car, saying he was a sooper dooper parallel parking impresario. I sed u go girl, hopped outta the driver’s seat then proceeded to watch him park. He'd, like, gun it, the car would leap forward about 2 inches, and then he'd like immediately slam on the brakes. Surge screech surge screech. Glad the fucking thing was a rental. Prob. wouldn'ta had much of a transmission left if you did that very often.

The funny part is, I don't think his approach got him into the spot any faster than my own creep-tap style woulda, but I will acknowledge that he didn't once kiss the bumper of the either cars. Very impressive.