🔥 Dancing with Pele 🔥
Dancing with Pele
On top of Haleakala & Mauna Loa
In the last few months, I’ve been fortunate to explore not only one volcano, but two of them here in Hawai’i!
In August, I went to see the Grand Volcano Pele herself on the Big Island and witnessed her fiery chambers. In October, I scaled the side of Haleakala, the ancient dormant volcano on Maui.
Both of these experiences were tremendously powerful for me, especially considering both of my parents have passed in the last nine months. The love of fire runs deep for me and adventuring in an intense manner runs in my DNA.
I grew up with my parents running a safari business, which meant my brother and I were fortunate to be shuffled along on ‘family safaris’ with other paying guests to such far off places such as East Africa, Peru, Australia, New Guinea, the Seychelles and a myriad of other exotic locations. By the time I was 18, I yearned to be like my other friends and have a normal ‘stay at home summer’, which I did. Granted, my parents were not to happy to come home from my freedom loving summer to find I had kicked a part of the sheet-rock wall in, which was an expression of my vast 18 years old teenage angst!
I digress.
On my recent Big Island trip, I walked 8.2 miles in one day! I did not plan this, it just happened. If I had chosen how far I would have walked, it would have probably been just 2 miles, but Madame Pele had other plans for me! On a dark night, using my Iphone as a flashlight, clothed in a PJ top sans bra, I spontaneously went out to find the lava. I did find her fiery flames, after a blasted missed turn led me astray! Due to my mistake, I had to backtrack 2 miles to find the right path. I have determined that Pele is a trickster, along with being a Goddess of Creation and Destruction.
The blessing of this evening journey was a vast release of the torment and pain I was feeling after my parents death. I felt their spirits walking beside me, urging me on, just like they did when I was 10 years old and cursing another long hike, in boots that gave me blisters. “Come on child, just a little bit further,'“ they would say. Then they would give me their famous GORP (G - good, O - ol, R- raisins, P - peanuts) to keep me farting my way up the trail.
Last week, on Maui, I escaped from a friends day long workshop that was getting a bit too intense for me to sit still at. (I have a hard time sitting for hours on end and Haleakala was calling my name.) I became possessed and just HAD to drive up her slope, wander around with the hundreds of other tourists, gazing in wonder at the cloudy ocean-scape far below.
There is something about volcanoes and this process of being present with this grief process that meets me exactly where I am at. At times I feel like I too will explode like a wild and ferocious volcano, hence why it is so comforting to cavort with the unpredictable and wily Pele.
I made Instagram reels of both of my journeys, which I’ve shared in the links below. I love the platform of mixing videos, with music, photography and writing. You can see in both of these videos I am dancing with my favorite winged scarfs!
Check out the Big Island visit with Pele here!
Check out the Haleakala visit here!
May we all face our fears, dare to dream and transmute our pain, whatever it may be! Ultimately I do believe that we are here to experience joy, shine and transform the shadows. What better place to do it then on the top of a volcano, eh?
Have you been to these sacred spots and what was your experience there? 🔥