The Man Who Dwells On Lava

Or...How To Be Rich and Free

I recently spent time in the Puna district of the Big Island of Hawaii with my son Daniel. My ostensible reason for the trip was to scope out the terrain for the Women’s Creativity Retreat I’m co-leading there in October. Not that I needed a reason to visit one of the most fascinating places on earth.

Puna is lush, craggy and untamed. Those who make their homes there tend to match the terrain, unapologetically carving out lives on their own terms.

While staying at the retreat center, Daniel and I set out one afternoon to visit the nearest town—Kalapana. When I typed it into my GPS, a couple of options came up, one of which was “Kalapana (Historic).” Thinking this was some kind of quaint downtown area, I selected it.

We soon found ourselves on a narrow road through fields of black lava rock, the kind called pahoehoe in the Hawaiian language, which folds and ripples like heavy liquid suspended in time—which of course is exactly what it is. Soon the houses grew fewer and farther between. What houses we did see looked new.

I continued following the map’s blue line through the lava fields until suddenly it disappeared, and Siri started repeating “proceed to the route” over and over in her calm, eerie voice.

“That’s weird,” I said to Daniel.

I backtracked, took a different road, and ended up in the same place. As we turned back again, I noticed for the second time, a long red dirt drive at the side of the road. Signs on either side of the drive read, “Hot Foot Photography” and “Rebuilding Off-Grid After Lava: A Photographer’s Journey.”

We decided to check it out.

The sky grew overcast as we bumped down the red dirt drive. The lava rock gleamed with a silvery sheen in the blue-grey light. Alongside the drive were occasional plantings, surprising pops of color among the rocks.

We parked in front of a tiny house. A silver-haired man with glasses and a warm smile emerged to greet us.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” said I. “Are you the photographer?”

“I am indeed. I’m Gary,” he said, extending a hand.

On the outer wall of the house, a display of twenty or so photos showed lava in all its glowing, molten glory—burbling over fields, pouring spectacularly off a high cliff into the sea, or captured in the the moment of crusting over and becoming rock—part pewter, part fire—a vivid encapsulation of how the rocks around us took shape. In one particularly fascinating shot, the lava falling into the ocean looked like a solid cone of hard rust-colored plastic.

Lava photos by Gary Sleik, Hot Foot Photography (except the one OF Gary, which is by me)

Beside the photos hang maps with detailed notations on lava activity over the years. I soon learned why the directions for “Kalapana (Historic)” had led me to this particular spot.

For the 18th and much of the 19th century, Kalapana was a thriving fishing community, considered one of the most beautiful villages on the Big Island. But in 1986, Madame Pele—as the volcano goddess is known—came for it. Between 1986 and 1990 most of the town was covered in lava. A hundred and eighty homes were lost in her flow, as well as the beloved Kaimu black sand beach.

A mural of Pele in the town of Pahoa

Twenty years passed before Pele came for Kalapana again. By then, Gary Sleik was living there. Mighty as she is, Madame Pele is rarely hasty in her movements. Gary stayed in his house, watching and taking photos, as the lava made its slow, inexorable trek toward his house. Finally, when it was about twenty feet from his front door, he moved to a different spot. Then he retreated to a picnic table and filmed Pele devouring his house.

The lava formed a cone that lifted his roof ten feet in the air. He showed me a photo of the metal rooftop suspended above the rocks, glowing an eerie white.

Gary is obsessed with lava. He used to work in construction, but now, at seventy, he gardens and photographs Pele’s doings full-time. It’s profoundly inspiring to live in a place where the earth’s power is so conspicuously evident. Every day brings change. The very instability of life in Pele’s shadow is part of what makes it so magical.

This reminded me of something my wasband David likes to say: “Some people have a false sense of security. I have a real sense of insecurity.”

He’s right, of course. As the Buddha noted 2500 years ago, everything is impermanent. Nothing is solid or stable. We just live much of our lives under the illusion that it is, until something reminds us of what’s true.

This was once Kaimu Beach Park.

And here, of course, was the answer to why Siri kept leading me to this spot when I selected “Kalapana (Historic)” on the map. This was where Kalapana once was. Now Kalapana is a field of lava with a few new houses, a single place to buy smoothies and acai bowls, and a long stretch of lava rock where there once was a beach.

I told Gary I understood the appeal of living in a place where the land was constantly recreating itself. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to lead my first creativity retreat there. What better place to remind ourselves of our own ongoing evolution?

Gary smiled. When he was young, he told me, he was deeply impressed by the work of Henry David Thoreau. He went off-grid for the first time in 1979, living for two years in the mountains of Wisconsin, without electricity or running water.

“That’s when I learned how rich I am,” he said.

I asked what he meant.

“How little I need. People think they need so much. When you realize you don’t need all that, you’re free.”

After the lava ate his house, he returned to the mainland, where he traveled the country for three years, living out of a van. The van looked ordinary from the outside, he explained, but inside he’d outfitted it with a bed. He also set it up to collect water and heat it with solar panels for showers.

My son asked if he ever stayed in hotels.

“Maybe five times in three years,” Gary told him. He estimates he paid for camping about five times as well.

At the end of three years he returned and built a new house in the spot where the old one had stood. The house is completely solar powered. He collects rainwater in a large tub and grows his own food.

“Is it hard to grow food on lava rock?” I asked.

“Not as hard as hanging drywall in ninety degree heat,” he said, adding that he supplements the porous rock with soil delivered from a nearby town.

“Are you a vegetarian?” asked Daniel.

“I’m a budgetarian,” said Gary, smiling. When he lived in the woods in Wisconsin, he ate a lot of venison. Here he eats mostly fruits and vegetables from his garden—things like kale, sweet potatoes, eggplant, and beans.

“Do you have a computer?” Daniel asked, eyes wide.

Gary nodded sheepishly.

“I do have a computer,” he said, with a little what-can-you-do sigh

Before we left, I bought two 8 x 10 prints of his astonishing photos for the low cost of $25. I asked if he sold them on his website as well.

“I don’t have a website,” he said.

“What?!” I said in surprise. “You could sell so many more photos that way.”

He shrugged, flashing me a twinkling smile.

“But I’m already rich!”

Kilauea, 2015

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If you’d like to reach Gary to learn more or purchase copies of his photos or videos, you can reach him at hotfootphotography@yahoo.com.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might also enjoy my travel pieces from last summer: Japan Journals 1: Tokyo, Japan Journals 2: A Night in Asakusa, or Japan Journals 3: Of Cats and Capybaras.

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Check out fall writing workshops at offleashwriting.com. The Women’s Creativity Retreat in Hawaii is full. If you’d like to get on the waiting list, please email me at tanyashaffer@gmail.com.