From Destruction Born

Some forms of destruction conduct their assault like freight trains come unglued.  Earthquakes, as example, occur with sudden and jarring forces that unexpectedly toss you about and then rent apart all that surrounds you.  In a matter of seconds, a tornado may ripsaw through an entire community leaving all that once stood shattered and flattened.  In such events, there is no time to think, to reminisce, to plan.

But there are other forms of destruction that creep slowly and inexorably in your direction.  Out West, where I live, forest fires represent this kind of event.  You may have time to thoughtfully sort through your holdings to save cherished photographs and heirlooms.  You may take one evening to have dinner or dance at your favorite place, having the thought in your mind that in a few days, or a week, the place will be gone.  Businesses that lie in the path of destruction will remain operating as long as possible.  Everyone hopes—and it is possible—that the advancing force of destruction is turned aside or suddenly stops.

My friend, Ariel Murphy, is presently caught ahead of another form of slow annihilation, one slower in advance than a wildfire.  She—and many other people I know—live near Pahoa on the big island of Hawai’i.  A creeping beast, in the form of the June 27^th lava flow, is slowly oozing down from a vent in Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world.  Recent days have seen the lava advancing at a rate of 400 yards per day.  All indications are that homes and roads will soon fall victim to the advancing lava.  Ariel will likely lose access to her home and may well lose her house to the lava flow.

Progressing lava flows are capricious.  Sometimes, the slowly advancing flow gradually grasps and burns forests and homes and then gathers into heaps and stony waves atop all that was once there.  In some places the earth opens up and swallows everything in a searing red maw.  In our immediate human terms, the destruction is wholesale and irreversible and heartbreaking.

In the longer run, the lava is constructing landscape footings for future paradise.  This is a time to gather and save for the now, and maybe it is also appropriate to collect together and dance for the past and the future.  Paradise is from destruction born.

--Mitchell Hegman

PHOTO: howstuffworks