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Honoli‘i Beach Park, Hilo, Hawai‘i

Thursday, April 24, 2025

Time to eruption: 116 hours, 12 minutes, 13 seconds

Dennis!” Standing on the beach, John MacGregor had to yell so the surfer would hear him over the sound of the waves. “How about you don’t go all kūkae on me, if that would be all right with you.”

The kids that John MacGregor was coaching had heard the expression from him before, and they knew full well that it wasn’t a compliment. Kūkae was a native Hawaiian word for “kook,” and when John MacGregor said it, it meant that someone in the water was acting as if he’d never been on a board before. Or was about to end up underneath one.

Mac was thirty-six years old and an accomplished surfer, or at least he had been when he was younger, before his knees started sounding like a marching band every time he got into a crouch on his board. Now his passion for the sport was channeled into these tough fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-old kids from Hilo, half of whom had already dropped out of school.

They came to this beach just two miles from downtown Hilo four afternoons a week, and for a few hours they were part of what islanders called the postcard Hawai‘i, the one from the TV shows and the movies and the Chamber of Commerce brochures.

“What did I do wrong, Mac man?” fourteen-year-old Dennis said as he came out of the water.

“Well, to start with, that wasn’t even your wave, it was Mele’s,” Mac said.

The two of them stood at the end of the exposed reef beach. Honoli‘i was known as a good beach for local surfers, mostly because the strong currents kept swimmers away and the kids had the beach to themselves.

The last one out on the water was Lono.

Lono Akani, who had grown up without a father and whose mother was a housekeeper at the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel, was sixteen and Mac’s favorite. He possessed a natural talent for this sport that Mac only wished he’d had at his age.

He watched Lono, into his crouch now on one of the Thurso Surf lancers Mac had purchased for each of them. Even from here Mac could see him smiling. Surely someday this boy would find fear in the ocean. Or fear would find him. Just not today as he flawlessly rode the inside curve of the wave.

Lono paddled in, put his board under his arm, and walked to where Mac waited on the beach. “Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For reminding me to always see the sets coming,” the boy said. “It’s why I was patient, ya, like you tell me to be, and waited for the wave I wanted.”

Mac patted him on the shoulder. “Keiki maika‘i.”

Good boy.

They heard the rumble from the sky then. Heard it and felt the beach shaking underneath them, making them both stagger.

The boy didn’t know whether to look up or down. But John MacGregor understood what had happened—he knew a volcanic tremor, often associated with degassing, when he felt one. He looked up at the sky around the Big Island. All the kids were doing the same. It made Mac remember something one of his college professors had said about volcanoes and “the beauty of danger.”

When the earth quieted, he felt the phone in his pocket buzzing. He answered and Jenny Kimura said, “Mac, thank God you picked up.”

Jenny knew that when he was coaching his surfers, he didn’t like to be disturbed with minor details from work. The press conference wasn’t starting for another hour, so if Jenny was calling him, it wasn’t about something minor.

“Jenny, what’s wrong?”

“We’ve got degassing,” she said.

No, not a minor detail at all.

“Hō‘o‘opa‘o‘opa,” he said, cursing like one of his surfer boys.