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Sunday, June 26, 2011

Maddie Made It!

If you have been following the blog you may remember that Maddie the Mad Scientist showed up at the airport and flew with us to Hawaii. Once we arrived in Oahu, Maddie, as usual, wondered off and we could not find her. Today, we visited Mauna Kea and low and behold...guess who we found. Yes, Maddie was there. She told us she had been at the bottom of Kilaeua testing volcanic gases. Now whether or not that happened is still up in the air!! I guess Maddie will board the plane and head back to the mainland with us tomorrow! Check out Maddie's video below!


We're History


After visiting the heiau (temple) that Kamehameha built, we visited a lava field that was dotted with petroglyphs.  The first thing that amazed me was the fact that this place of importance was slap dab in the middle of a golf course!!  On both sides of the site was  pristine grass and eighteen holes.  I was a little taken aback by this.  It seemed to me that a place of such importance should have been somewhere else.  As we climbed over lava  we started to notice carvings etched into it. (These carvings are known as petroglyphs.)  As we walked around trying to decide what all the strange markings meant we came upon two that were really easy to "read"... a bicycle and a school bus.  At this point I started to doubt the credibility of this place.  How could people from long ago know about bikes and buses?  I questioned my instructor about this.  He gave me a brief history lesson on the site.  According to his lesson the site was used as a resting point on an road that covered over 32 miles.  The road connected villages to the coast. As people rested they etched petroglyphs into the lava to "leave their mark" .  (One petroglyph that was in abundance was a symbol of a gecko.  This symbol is one of protection.)  The people also built wind breaks out of the chunks of lava to protect themselves from the trade winds blowing across the area.  My instructor went on to explain that the petroglyphs were no more than 1,000 years old, and some of the more sophisticated etchings were done after nails were introduced to the Hawaiian people by Captain Cook and his crew in 1779.  This explained a lot, but I was still wondering about the newer more modern carvings.  My professor commented that vandalism is just modern day petroglyphs. He reminded me that we are no more or no less important than those people that lived hundreds of years ago, after all "just like that we will be history too".  What a powerful statement this was.  It certainly makes me want to make the most out of my time on this earth.  It makes me want to leave a "mark" that is meaningful and significant. 
Gecko Petroglyph 
Mrs. West