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E1 Regions of Fire Consider a mountain range 1,500 miles long, 500–600 miles wide, the summits ris- ing 15,000 feet at its northwestern extremity and 30,000 feet at its southeastern end. More than 30 million years ago, through a vent in the earth’s surface magma and molten rock poured quietly to the surface, hardened, and piled up layer upon layer to form those immense mountains, the highest, unsurpassed on earth.1 When space turned around, the earth heated When space turned over, the sky reversed When the sun appeared standing in shadows To cause light to make bright the moon, When the Pleiades are small eyes in the night, From the source in the slime was the earth formed From the source in the dark was darkness formed From the source in the night was night formed From the depths of the darkness, darkness so deep Darkness of day, darkness of night Of night alone.2 So begins the epic song of genesis, the Hawaiian hymn of creation that cele- brated the birth of the mountain range whose peaks, jutting up in the midst of Pacific waters, became a haven for life. In the night of the ocean’s cold and silent depths, paired rocks, male and female, reproduced themselves during that chaotic and fecund period to form the Hawaiian Ridge, followed in succession by the births 6 Copyrighted Material REGIONS OF FIRE F 7 of Kumulipo (“source-darkness”), male, and Po‘ele (“night-blackness”), female, tenuous polyps that gave rise to branching coral, grubs and worms, starfish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, oysters and mussels, and seaweed and land plants swaying in liquid currents of water and air.
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