Volcanoes! Geology in action - liquified rock fountaining up from the deep within the earth. Awe-inspiring; unpredictable; deadly; worshipped as gods and demons; powerful forces to be feared, respected... From my apartment in Berkeley, California, I felt a long way from any such excitement. But I have been fascinated with these fire-breathing mountains since I was a little kid. I wanted to see lava! For some reason that thought was really nagging me as I was wrapping up my university degree program, so I finally decided to go find some. I started digging for information - where would I have the best chance of checking out volcanic activity? As I dug, I soon realized that active volcanoes are all over the place, waiting to be witnessed and experienced! Nicaragua. Mexico. Japan. Costa Rica. Indonesia. Philippines. Ecuador. Congo. New Zealand... But what are the odds of seeing one in action? Gotta be in the right place at the right time. And of course there's the added deterrent of possible death in the path of an accelerating cloud of scalding ash. But still, I found myself wanting to experience the excitement and uncertainty of an active volcano...

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) is a small building that rests on the western edge of Kilauea caldera, in the southeastern quadrant of the Big Island of Hawai'i. It is the workplace of numerous geo-scientists who continuously monitor Kilauea's pulse and conduct scientific study. Information pours in from hundreds of seismic stations and ground deformation monitors around the island (and across the state). The workstations used to continually analyze incoming data are kept in a special room that has been constructed to withstand a magnitude-8 earthquake. Gas emissions are regularly measured, routine helicopter flights survey activity, lava samples are inspected, research happens... They have a website that has a daily status report of Kilauea's volcanic activity - you can visit it at http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/. It's pretty cool. Kilauea is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and as a result the folks that work at HVO are able to witness volcanic activity practically every day. I had found my destination!

On a whim I decided to write to the webmaster to see if they have any internship programs. I figured that they must have plenty of computer systems that need maintenance, or maybe just grunt work to do. I got a response with information about a volunteer program - minimum 3 months, lodging included. Before I knew it, I was off to the Big Island for a stint in the spring of 1996!

The photo at left was taken from within the caldera, looking up at the observatory on the edge. My volunteer work sometimes included collecting gas samples, which in this particular instance took me to the floor of the caldera to suck nasty sulfurous fumes into a glass tube. The nastiness was a mixture of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, and other chemicals being constantly emitted from cracks in the ground. A faint rotten-egg smell usually permeated the observatory, tickling the back of your throat. On particularly bad days it really made you nauseous...

Being an electrical engineer, the main focus of my volunteer work was helping to maintain their computer systems and building hardware for testing equipment. During the course of my 3 months at HVO, I got to know many great people who were extremely excited about their work. I had access to the latest and greatest information, direct from the experts, and this opened a wealth of opportunities to experience some incredible secrets of the Big Island. I had never imagined I'd be standing in the midst of lava exploding out of the ground, or listening to the eerie glass-crunching sounds of a slow-moving pahoehoe flow spread out under the moonlight...