Morning sounds of cardinal. Shot of cardinal in flight landing near a lehua blossom. Suddenly screech of metal on rock as bulldozer destroys a tree in front of it.

I was jarred awake by a bulldozer just down the slope from my coffee shack. Escaped to the City of Refuge . To the south Mauna Loa rose from the sea like a massive ramp leading to heaven. What would it be like to stand on top? One thing for sure: no bulldozers up there. I decided to climb the largest active volcano in the world. I was in the mood to be alone and away from the rest of the world.

Although the front end of my car wobbled in several directions at once, I made good time on my way to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park . I signed in at Park Headquarters. Their matter-of-fact check list contained words and phrases such as: strenuous, unstable, intense, altitude sickness, disoriented, hypothermia, gases, and other hazards. I read that driving rain, snow, and eruptions were possible at any time.

The ranger asked the condition of my winter-grade sleeping bag and its color in case I got lost. I asked how the weather had been recently. “Rainy,” the ranger answered grimly.

The Strip Road squirms upward past a verdant kipuka , an oasis of vegetation surround but untouched by more recent lava flows. Here Spanish moss drapes like scarves from tree limbs. Tree ferns skirt the thick trunks of the ancient forest. Tufts of grass and moist moss make the land velvet around knots of roots.

Nowhere else in the world could you find such a variety of rare species, not even on Galapagos Island where Darwin did much of his research. Because of Hawaii 's isolation—the nearest land is two thousand miles across the sea—a large share of Hawaii 's plant species are unique to these islands. It wasn't easy to cross that ocean. It took each species an average of one hundred thousand years to migrate successfully to Hawaii , two hundred thousand years for each fern species.

Perhaps starting at the coast, each of the original three hundred species began to mutate, making changes to suit each new environment it encountered as it made its way up the mountain. With no natural enemy and with abundant rainfall upslope, these species flourished and subdivided to create twenty-seven hundred new forms of life.

Some of these are amazingly particular as to where on this planet they will live. One type of primitive fern has two distinct generations in its life cycle, no family resemblance between frond and offspring. The leafy generation loves the wet humid environment of a steamy lowland jungle while the spore generation of this same fern insists on dry, cool, alpine air. This fern grows only on active Kilauea at the edge of steam vents where both generations survive in vastly different conditions only a few feet from each other.

Farther upslope I drove past a couple of mooing nene geese. Their ancestors may have been waterfowl, but over the centuries they learned to live far from water and lost the webbing between their toes. They are now lava-fowl.

Once the nene thrived on these slopes. Then the Polynesian settlers came with their pigs and dogs and probably rats. Then the white sea captains came with their goats and cattle and probably rats. And they let the mongoose loose.

The nene goose was not ready for international competition. By 1944 there were only fifty left. Some were raised in protective captivity and now the nene seems to be making a comeback—unlike the fifteen hundred species of plants and animals endemic to Hawaii that have become extinct since Captain Cook sailed into Kealakekua Bay .

I parked my car at 6662 feet above sea level. Here a carelessly tossed cigarette had thinned the forest. Even this burnt-out section was lush compared to what was above. As I climbed, I passed stunted trees, twisted natural bonsai struggling through cracks in the rock. Soon, the seven-foot-tall ferns had disappeared. Eventually so did the ohelo the tufts of grass, and finally a last defiant finger of sadleria fern.

The lava was part of an old flow, reddish and weathered like the wrinkled skin of a wizened sailor. Hour after hour I hiked the crooked trail. I watched the clouds build towers above me.

Late in the afternoon I arrived at Red Hill, a cinder cone with a poetically simple and accurate name. A cabin had been built in the hollow of this dormant cone, protected from the cold winds that blow at 10,000 feet . The towering cumulus clouds at the summit began to anvil in the trade winds and then, at sunset, turned gold above the darkening dome. Tomorrow I thought, up there would be home.

I opened my eyes at the first light of dawn and saw my breath. I started hiking early to get warm. The sun was a ball floating on a white ocean of clouds thousands of feet below. I chased my long shadow over the terrain of a strange planet bereft of plants.

The lack of vegetation didn't mean a lack of color. At first I saw only shades of frown from reddish to beige, and shades of black from charcoal to gray. Then my eyes, starved for color, began to search. I found the green shimmer of olivine crystals. I saw primary yellow o the sides of hills near sulfur vents. There were cinnabar-red clinkers like fields of discarded ceramic shards. Sometimes braids of rock reflect the morning sun like blond hair. Sometimes lava appeared opalescent with all the colors of oil on water.

There were also many fantasies of form and texture. The path meandered over a crunchy crust of nascent rock. It crumbled like crackers beneath each step. I was like an ant crawling over acre upon acre of petrified coffee grounds. I was in a child's dream of never-ending chocolate cake icing. I walked on golden steps.

The land imitated the billows of clouds, the texture of sponge, the shape of bubbles, boils, tunnels, and rivers. There were gaping goya gashes, mounds of ashes, and blown glass tresses known as Pele's hair.

I was as tiny as a speck of dust as I slowly trudged from rock marker to rock marker on the side of Mauna Loa , the long mountain. Slowly. I rested every few steps. My legs were killing me. A mountain climber would laugh at this easy grade. My legs were screaming.

And my backpack didn't fit right; it was too short. All the weight was hanging on my shoulders, and it was becoming painful after seven miles of high altitude hiking, always upward. I began to wonder if I would make to the summit cabin. Or maybe I would be forced to huddle in a niche in the freezing altitude. Would me sleeping bag really be warm enough?

The more I thought about my situation, the more tragic it appeared. The more tragic, the more fear stiffened my neck and shoulders. Then I realized: if I didn't lighten up and relax my shoulders, I couldn't possibly survive.

To occupy my mind with something besides pain, fatigue and fear, I play with the words ‘altitude' and ‘attitude' until a sort of chant develops with the rhythm of my footsteps. “We're all walking at an altitude, with an attitude. We're all playing with an attitude. An altitude, an attitude. An altitude, and attitude.

I made it to the top.

The summit cabin named Pele's Clubhouse is located fifteen yards from the eastern rim of the Moku'aweoweo Caldera and a vertical two hundred foot vertiginous drop to the caldera floor.

At sunset, Mauna Loa cast a purple-blue shadow a hundred miles out to sea over a cloud carpet. That night the sky was black crystal, and the stars looked as if I might have to duck some of the closer ones.

I sit on the edge of a crater. My world is like a colossal Oriental coin with a gaping void in the center. I remember the Japanese Buddhist priest: “All you need to do to be enrightened is to shift your weight.”

I try to visualize earth's orbit. The winter solstice is one of two points when the planet changes direction during its annual ellipse-shaped wobble around the sun. The earth is titled on its axis so tat in winter the sun shines directly on the Tropic of Capricorn to the south of the equator. Each December 21 st when the planet spins into the night, Hawaii Island located near the Tropic of Cancer and north of the equator, is at the outermost point on the globe, at the very edge of the earth's orbit. And I on top of this mountain, am in outer space.

I sit on top of this expanding mountain on an island as far away from anywhere else as a person can be on this planet. The earth tonight is whiplashing around in its orbit, and I ride the bucking globe on top of this pinnacle. With the full moon momentarily mesmerizing gravity, I am as light as I have ever been. I grab hold of cold lava, to make sure I continue to fly in the same orbit as that of the earth.

Life without railings. No longer enmeshed. On the edge. On the outside. Nearly froze. I forgot to go in.

The next morning the ground was white. The high cirrus clouds were still pink in an otherwise clear sky as I began my trek down. Soon the sun baked the black rock so that the white remained only in the shadows and the land was like a black-and-white photo negative of itself.

Since I no longer argued with gravity, my pace down the mountains was fast. The never-ending changes of forms flashed by and broke up any patterns that formed in my thoughts. All was liquid: the sky, the rocks, and my mind. Down was toward the clouds or was it? My eyes darted from marker to marker. Miss one; I was lost. No worries.

A flash of green caught my eye; moss grew in a crevice just above Red Hill, the first vegetation I came across. Tufts of brush began to appear at about nine thousand feet; dandelions at eight thousand. Trees grew taller at every turn. The air became most. Birds sang. No more sulfur smells. Green.

And now I am back down again with people. Back to the logic of automobiles and fast food. Back to certain attitudes above sea level.

Things were so much lighter up there: light air, lighter appetite, lighter mind.

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