Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure

Western slope of Mauna Loa (13,100′). The old trail of footprints lies somewhere beneath the cloud cover.

 A few months after arriving in Hawai‘i, Perkins was in the Kona area of the Big Island collecting on the western slopes on Mauna Loa, which are characteristically covered with sharp clinker lava flows called ‘a‘a. This rubble-like ground cover is not only treacherous to any confident footing, but the razor sharp edges of the ‘a‘a can do quick damage to the foot coverings of the uninitiated. It was only a matter of days before the boots Perkins wore were torn to shreds. Instead of spending more of the Committee’s scant funds to purchase more boots, he opted to go barefoot while collecting. This proved so successful, that he continued his barefoot collecting throughout most of his sojourn in the wilds of Hawaii’s forests, to the amusement and concern of his sponsors and family.

—Barefoot On Lava: The Journals and Correspondence of Naturalist R.C.L. Perkins in Hawai’i, 1892-1901

The Ka’u Desert.

Thirty minutes into the desert afoot I pull up short to survey the ragged land.

Scanning the lava field in a 180 degree fan, I observe and ponder matters of geography and hydrology.

Then I set out deeper into the sere wastes following no trail.

A sloping deposit of soft, deep sand, textured by wind.

I navigate by line of sight, with no directions or coordinates to follow on a digital device.

I’m old-school analog. Reliance on electrified devices and screens dull senses and lessens experience.

I do not own a handheld computer to access the U.S. government’s Global Positioning System and I have no list of coordinates I keep on file.

Soon into the blackened desert and I’m within it, consumed by it, and concerns of getting disoriented and lost creep into my mind.

These feelings of insecurity add to the adventure and sharpen senses.

I leave only slight marks on intermittent patches of packed sand and nothing on lava stone.

To the untrained eye—myself included—it might be difficult if not impossible to retrace my steps.

In usual fashion, as is my habit wherever I walk, I avoid if possible stepping on sand or any sediment fine enough to leave a trace.

I dislike leaving footprints as much as I dislike seeing them.

If I must pass over untracked sand I do so on the periphery, along the borderline of scrub or stone and sand.

I constantly check my back trail. The way back always looks different than the way forward.

Looking back from where I came I trace my route physically with a finger held aloft, while reciting my perceived course out loud.

To see, say and scribe imprints this information onto my mental hard drive with greater accuracy and assurance that I will remember it.

Maybe.

Early morning started with blue skies and few clouds.

Yet, now with even the respite of building cloud cover I feel taxed, light headed and drained to an extent disproportionate for how little ground I have covered.

The heat and humidity in this high desert of 3,500’ is punishing.

I’m covered head to toe in thin fabric attire, thumbs through sleeve loops, hat, hood and sunglasses.

I bare only the oval of my face and half of each hand to the relentless sun.

The hotter it gets the more I wear, not less, like the Saudis, who would be caught dead if in t-shirts and shorts.

bird brain

I sip shots of tepid water from my backpack through a silicone nipple.

It’s local and natural water, recently fallen from clouds into an old-growth jungle not too far from where I am now in desert, a jungle wherein trees have been dated to 1,500 years old and giant Hawaiian tree ferns grow in stands over ten feet tall, trunks 12 to 14 inches or more in diameter.

The radical change in land comes quick and close together, jungle abutting desert.

The rainwater I drink is taken from a catchment system, carbon filtered and purified by ultra violet rays.

Threads of volcanic glass called Pele’s hair cover the Ka’u Desert in thin filaments and windblown windrows, looking remarkably similar to blonde human hair.

Pressing on I come to the first particular spot I feel holds real potential.

I did not know what I was looking for, but this looks like it.

The outcrop looks like hardened mud compared to its surroundings.

It’s a small panel of exposed canvas, so to speak, notably different than the surrounding ragged, smooth or rumpled lava rock and more permanent than the shifting sand.

The thin layer of ashen mudstone, undercut by runoff, whereupon lie the foot prints.

Tiny balls of mud permeate the ash deposit, as seen with a close look at the previous photo. Once liberated from the deposit by erosive forces, the bb-sized balls litter the desert floor. Did these concretions fall from the sky as muddy rain drops, caused by the thunderstorm rains of 1790?

The deposit runs only one to two inches deep, once covering the entirety of the volcano’s foot, but now only visible in busted plates.

It’s solidified mud made of volcanic ash.

The ashen mudstone lies across the land in sparse patches, here or there, not much, not large, mostly buried in sand and broken and washed away from thunderstorm runoff over the last 230 years or more.

The ash was first deposited as mud falling from the air during thunderstorms triggered by a terrific volcanic ash eruption around 1790.

The muddy ash rained over the land and the people thereon.

In the area under the clouds, as shown in the very first snapshot in this post, the prints cross through middle frame here, the western slope of Mauna Loa in the distance.

I see the first print! And it’s astonishing.

I look in the direction of travel. It looks like hell on earth, even more ragged and less plant life than where I stand.

A moment later I find another panel with two different trails of tracks comprised of several prints.

It appears as if two people were walking together side by side at a slight distance, although it might be that these people passed at different times.

Some tracks are small and shallow, maybe that of women or children. Others are larger and deeper and might be men’s.

This particular place and these prints were once a frequented trail of importance.

Three toe prints left, two erased by erosion. (March 2025)

Foot held aloft, not touching the ground.

This is one of the deeper, larger footprints, showing most prominently the heel pressed into the mud, pebbles sitting in it like a bowl. The print lies at the broken off edge of a plate of mudstone, which has been undercut from runoff. The toes and ball of the footprint have been erased by erosion and washed away.

A hand for scale showing a print measuring less than nine inches long.

Further Reading:

Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park Archeological Inventory of the
Footprints National Register Site: Keonehelelei – The Falling Sands (PDF)