Unscientific questions

After 80 minutes of hiking across black pahoehoe lava, Pua Makua, Ph.D., reached the green kipuka. Her altimeter said she'd climbed to 1,800 feet above sea level. Pulling a bottle of cold water from her backpack, she gazed back down the slope, saw her rented Jeep on the highway, cars buzzing past, and further down the hill a little black sand beach cut perpendicular to the coastline and a lovely dark blue bay that could be reached by a Jeep trail. Above the beach, there appeared to be two natural hot springs. A swim and a soak would be a wonderful way to relax later. Just offshore, a humpback leaped and splashed.

Pua turned, faced the kipuka, bowed her head. She was a scientist who relied on hard data, but she was also a Hawaiian and believed in the value of the old Hawaiian ways. It was never that Hawaiian culture failed. It was that it was over-run by superior military might and subjected to what amounted to germ warfare. No, the culture, and respect for the old ways, was still a good way to go for Hawaiians.

"O Pele, who created this kipuka
thank you for leaving this living space
and the seeds that spring from it
to replenish the cleansed earth,
and bless me again and always.
O gods of the kipuka, who I know not yet,
I ask your permission to enter,
with respect and appreciation,
and for your blessing as well."

"Who," she heard a high-pitched voice say.

"Me, Pua," she replied. "Pua Makua."

Looking up, high on a guava tree branch, she saw a pueo. A Hawaiian owl. An aumakua. A god.

"Oh my!" she gasped, covering her mouth with her hands, feeling cold bolts of chickenskin running up and down her back like a Vegas dealer was shuffling cards on it. "Thank you, Pueo."

She reached out, touched a leaf of the guava tree.

"It's OK with you, Pueo, I'm just going to walk around for a while first."

"Who," the pueo said, watching with swiveling neck.

"Way cool," Pua whispered to herself.

What was it about this place, Pua wondered as she walked the perimeter, that made Pele stop the lava here and flow around it? Why was it sacred to her? What meaning did it have? What future did she see for it? Decidedly unscientific questions. But that did not make them invalid questions.

She heard a racket overhead and another question formed on her lips: "What the hell is that schmutz doing?!"

Barely a foot below her boots, similar sentiments were being expressed.