Pele Kate Kealani H. Winter We stood pressed against the horizontal rain that whipped across the lava desert at the top of Kilauea Volcano. Perched on the edge of Halema’uma’u Crater, looking into the steaming, smoking firepit, we waited for our Kumu Hula, our master teacher, to begin the chant and drumming that would signal the start of our sacred dance to honor Pele, Hawaiian Goddess of Fire, at home below us at her volcanic hearth. Accustomed to dancing hula nearer the ocean, we shivered in the mountain cold at the crater’s almost 4000 foot elevation. Wet and shuddering, breathing in the sulfurous air of eruption, we began the hula dedicated to Pele, offering her our movements, our sisterhood, our aloha, our love for the land she had created. The chant rose over the thrust of hip and rustle of our skirts. The slap of bare feet on lava was lost against the whistle and howl of wind. We swayed and dipped, called out, plunged and whirled. When it was done, having left our offerings of chocolate and special stones and gin and the skin of our soles, we backed away from the abyss and picked our way across the uneven lava desert to the parking area where other hula halau (troupes) waited their turns to stand against the elements and dance for Pele’s blessing. In April every year, the crater is Mecca to hula dancers who are preparing to compete in the most prestigious hula competition in the world, the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival in Hilo on the windward side of the largest of the Hawaiian islands, Hawaii. All paths lead to Kilauea that week. Pele lives. If you doubt it, become one of the throngs of tourists and pilgrims to trek to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park -- 2.5 million people annually. A “drive-in volcano,” Kilauea is readily accessible by tour bus, rental car or motorcycle. But the best way to meet and know Pele is barefoot, shuddering on the precipice that is the threshold of her home. In Hawaii nei , as the whole chain of islands is known, tourists are entertained by stories of the Goddess’s volcanic outbursts and tempestuous love affairs, but unless they make themselves visitors, it is unlikely that they will hear the complex narratives that explain the interconnectedness of the spirits and landscapes of Hawaii nei, the temperament of Pele, and the world view that permeates Hawaiian culture even now. Pele seems to be the only one of the Hawaiian deities who takes human form and moves among the islands’ inhabitants today. Nearly everyone who is “local” or “kama’aina,” a longtime resident, either knows of someone who has seen the Goddess or has encountered her personally. A devoutly Christian couple I know totaled their car on a mountain road late one night after seeing the figure of a woman in black rise up in the middle of the macadam. A hotel employee tells of having a woman ask him for a match and then, as she moved across the lobby, noticing that she had no flesh below the hem of her dress -- she moved on a current of air like cloud over ocean. A Jewish realtor tells me he married his flame-haired third wife because he saw her hitchhiking, looking like Pele, and Volume 13, Number 1
SPRING 2001
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