Life In The Cracks: Photograph by Will Tenney

Life In The Cracks

When the lava cooled after the 1959 Kilauea Iki eruption, it cracked and warped as the magma below subsided. Over the last nearly 60 years, leaves and other organic materials from the surrounding tropical rain forest 400 feet up on the crater rim have fallen into the crater, finding small places to get caught, deteriorate, and become the beginnings of soil. Seeds, too, have blown in, or been dropped by passing birds, and have found some of these little nooks to be protected places to germinate, grow, and thrive. Someday this now barren crater floor will once again be forested, replacing the forest which was destroyed in 1959 and buried under 400 feet of boiling lava.