A generally under-appreciated fact about the Hawaiian Islands is the astonishing contrasts they present.  The images that come most readily to mind when thinking about these Islands involve sandy beaches, tropical plants, warm, placid waters, soft breezes and brilliant sunshine.  These are accurate but quite incomplete: also seen in Hawai`i are towering cliffs backing rocky shorelines, arid lava flows devoid of plant life, awe-inspiring waves (and even tsunami), powerful winds (including occasional hurricanes) and massive clouds bringing torrential rains.

 Understandably, tourism marketers emphasize the first set of images and downplay the others.  And, truly, visitors can usually rely on finding a match for the soft and gentle pictures they have seen and internalized.  Part of what makes a visit to the “Big Island,” the Island of Hawai`i, so rewarding is the astonishing variety available in a relatively compact setting.  What follows outlines some of the contrasts to be found on the Island in the context of the circumstances that give rise to them. 

Windward/Leeward, Dry/Wet

Because of its gigantic mountains, the Island of Hawai`i was surely the first to be spotted by the voyagers from southern Polynesia who settled the land some 1700 years ago.  As their double-hulled canoes were pushed along by the trade winds from the east, they would have seen the summits of the volcanic mountains they came to call Mauna Kea (“white mountain”) and Mauna Loa (“long mountain”), rising nearly 14,000 feet above sea level, long before the lesser islands of Hawai`i came into view.

Rainfall over the ocean surrounding the Island amounts to about the same as the continental U.S. average: 30 inches a year.  The trade winds mentioned above are the dominant element in Hawaiian weather, sweeping over thousands of miles of open sea before reaching the volcanic slopes rising from the middle of the North Pacific.  The interaction of the land and the wind creates a complex of climatic zones and microclimates.  Some areas on the islands receive less than half of what falls on the open sea, while other places get more than ten times as much.  Thus, on the Island of Hawai`i the settlement of Kawaihae, perched on the flank of the Island’s oldest surface volcano, Kohala has an average annual rainfall of about 10 inches.  A little over eight straight-line miles away and 5,200 feet higher, the summit of the volcano has yearly rainfall totals in excess of 175 inches.

 The highly local nature of the Island’s weather and climate are hinted at by the experience of driving out of the sunshine into a pounding rain and emerging a minute or two later back into brilliant light. 

Up/Down

The Pacific Ocean around the Island has a depth that ranges from 16,000 to 18,000 feet.  Exceptionally hot material in the earth’s interior rises up to the oceanic crust beneath the Hawaiian Islands, pushing and melting its way through to the surface (in this instance, the bottom of the ocean) and making a volcanic pile.  Only if this process persists for something on the order of 300,000 years does the pile grow high enough to break the surface of the ocean and become an island.  The giant volcano, Mauna Loa, is so massive – an estimated 18,000 cubic miles in volume, making it the largest mountain on earth -- that it deforms the ocean floor on which it rests, pushing the crust beneath it into a concavity that is thought to mirror the sloping shoulders of its upper reaches.  Its top is officially listed as being 13, 677 feet above sea level.  Geologists’ best guess as to the overall height of Mauna Loa from the depth of the depression of the crustal plate supporting it to its summit is in the neighborhood of 55,000 feet, more than 10 miles and nearly twice the altitude of Mt. Everest.  Neighboring Mauna Kea is a bit taller (13, 796’), earning it the title of the highest mountain in the Pacific.

Scuba divers do not, of course, come anywhere near the ocean’s depth around Hawai`i but even so, they are cautioned against going too quickly (i.e., within 24 hours) to the Island’s higher elevations.  Internal changes in the body while at scuba depth are dangerous at high altitude.

 Old/New

Visitors to Hawai`i who are aware of the geologic story of their home lands are sometimes incredulous to learn that the Island of Hawai`i is less than a million years old.  Geologists have a frame of reference about time that makes a million years seem quite recent, though humans have not been on the planet for nearly that long.  The oldest volcanic rocks on Kaua`i, the oldest of the inhabited Islands of Hawai`i, date to 5,100,000 years before the present, “only” half a million years before the appearance of the earliest Hominids.  Of the two most active volcanoes in Hawai’i, both on the Island of Hawai`i, 90% of Kilauea’s surface is less than 1,000 years old and 90% of Mauna Loa’s surface has been covered in the last 4,000 years.

 On the floor of Kilauea’s summit caldera, one can stand with a foot on land created when lava erupted in 1974 and the other foot on land formed when exploded ash and rock fell from the sky in 1790.  In March of 2008, a 2 ½ ton boulder was exploded from inside a pit crater to the floor of the caldera. 

Hot/Cold

At the summit of Mauna Kea, the tallest of the Island’s volcanoes, permafrost is found a few feet below the volcanic cinders that mantle its upper slopes; freezing temperatures are recorded nightly on both of the Island’s highest volcanoes.  Evidence of glaciation is visible on scraped and misplaced boulders, and in the piles of ground-up rock or moraine deposited by the terminal advance of ice sheets some 10,000 years ago.  Evidence suggests that at that time an ice cap 25 square miles in extent and as much as 350 feet thick covered Mauna Kea’s summit.  Because the altitudes of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are nearly the same, storms that drop snow on one almost always covers the other.  Mauna Loa, however, loses its cap of snow more rapidly that Mauna Kea because its newer (hence darker) rocks absorb more of the sun’s warmth, and because as an active volcano it generates heat internally as well.

Though the subtropical location of the Islands and the moderating effect of its waters and winds generally keep air temperatures in inhabited areas from becoming uncomfortably warm, the lava produced by its volcanoes is hotter than that found in many other eruptive sites.  A ranger at a lava flow in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was asked, “How hot is it right here?”  He replied, “Well, the air’s about 85 degrees and the lava’s 2000 degrees, so it’s somewhere in between.”

Exotic/Familiar

More than any other place in the U.S., Hawai`i has kept its place names in the language of the traditional culture.  Directions are commonly given with reference to mauka (toward the uplands) and makai (seaward).  Tourists buy t-shirts to show off the very un-English name of the humuhumunukunukuapua`a.  This Hawaiian fish has English and Latin names, too, of course, but the point is that everyone who comes to the Islands will exercise some effort to pronounce words in a Polynesian language.  Those who have historical interests will learn of the amazing story of the settlement of the Islands and the outstanding qualities of the culture that flourished here even before the exciting and catastrophic events following the arrival of Captain Cook in 1778. 

 That Hawai`i is part of the modern world is attested to by the presence of numerous convenience and “big box” stores, but visitors with any sensitivity at all will be impressed by threads of an ancient way of being and thinking that run through daily life in the Islands. 

Come, check it out.  There’s much here to take in.