Above the slopes of the eastern mountain, the moon rises; it is nearing its seven-day size, waxing to half light, half darkness. The light of the sun as it sets strikes the dusty surface and, without atmosphere to impede, reflects back to our earth, in a delicate choreography which changes each minute and each day.

Today we drive to the height of Haleakala, as it rises 20,000 feet from the ocean floor, then 10,000 feet above the level of the sea into the tropical sky. Measured from its roots to its peak,it is the highest mountain mass on the planet. We climbed from tropical warmth into subtropical slopes, where cattle and plantations sprawled; through eucalyptus groves whose leaves perfumed the air and shaded the car; into sparse grasslands dotted with gorse and scrub; into the clouds…

… and through the clouds, around hairpin turns a mile and a half above the valley floor, on a well-maintained two-lane road; into and out of mist and rain as we swung over to the eastern rim where the moist air gathers and forms weather, then around the narrowing cone to the west where the clouds became ragged and provided a vista to further layers of cloud below us.

We drive slowly to the summit where, at 10,023 feet, we were higher than all mountains of the eastern seaboard. The mountains I have climbed, and over which I have led meditative hikes and at the feet of which we have camped as a company of seekers — some seeking kula, others exercise among friends — rise to 6,288 feet at their highest reach, at the snowy peak of Mount Washington. Even then, most climbs start from more than 2,000 feet above sea level. Here, the great mass of Pu'u Ulaula, the "red hill" that collects the sunset, rises all ten thousand feet clear from the waves of the Pacific, certainly a full day's journey for anyone who began walking at the beaches.

The observation deck at the summit was shrouded with cloud and cool rain. The crater behind us was filled and invisible, while we could look down to some points west over the valley and in the direction of Pu'u Kukui, the "hill of light", whose sodden heart we explored a few days back at the 'Iao Valley under lowering clouds, and whose peaks (5,788 feet) we could not quite make out through its own cloud cover.

The surface of the mountain is dust and rock. Unlike the great granite blocks which comprise our New England ranges, this truly was a moonscape, flat expanses of lava-dark dust-become-mud, worn away from the more fragile volcanic stones by wind and water, and run downhill. The expanse was dotted here and there with a rock outcrop, or with the equally alien Silversward, a dusty-green plant whose flower, when it blooms, rises two to four feet in a burst of frond and pollen.

Elsewhere, the dark and jagged stone protrudes, looms, leads away into the cloud.

We walked down to the visitors' center, which rode the cloud at the edge of the crater, and soon after arriving… the clouds dispersed! And what appeared by crag and vista, dropping away from our feet as a cliff and a chasm and a wave of fallen dust, what more of the moon than what we had seen before. Incredible colors and forms, jagged sentinels of stone, then sandy flow toward the crater floor. 

Along that floor, from where we stood against its long axis, small ash cones dotted a line of heights, the last activity of a cooling creation. In the eye's inability to frame that space, what appeared to be minor hills resolved themselves into minor peaks of their own, the largest of which, Pu'u o Maui, the "Hill of (the god) Maui" rises 1,000 feet of its own above the vast dusty floor. As we pored over the scene with camera and gaze, small flecks of color resolved as hikers, tiny as motes on the face of a moon, climbing the cone of ash just before Pu'u o Maui…

The size of it, like the size of the Grand Canyon, of a greater scale than human pride can embrace. You either lose yourself in the immensity of what has been created, or if you cannot be humbled, you lose the ability to look into the face of god.

Today I traveled with family and cared for children. Before I leave, however, I will make proper pilgrimage, rising in the night to arrive at the summit around 4am, to live for an hour under the greatest dome of stars available in our hemisphere: 2,500 miles from heavy light or air pollution, on the top of the highest mountain mass on the planet, I will wait for the sun.

And as our earth turns and the rays of the star find me over the rim of the crater, I'll start down the long trail to the crater floor…