Religious offerings not welcome at Mount Kilauea

[mlprahl]

Interesting read that I just saw on cnn.

 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/21/hawaii.volcano.ap/index.html

[Suebee]

Not surprising....they dont allow you to build stone towers to Pele either. That was a very popular activity and we even did it when we were there, but I guess now they dont like people doing it.

[AZbeachboy]

That is interesting. I would have never thought about doing that. To me it would just have been something I knew about Hawaiian history. Seems the Pele thing would be ok. No rotting food there and that is what seems to be the problem.

[jerseyjk]

Not surprising....they dont allow you to build stone towers to Pele either.

 

They make that pretty clear ...

[Spikesgirl]

The Hawaiian people have been leaving tributes to Pele at Halemaumau for centuries and I don't think it will stop any time soon. While I can understand the concerns of the park rangers, I think someone could make a case of freedom to worship. Perhaps an entire pig is bit much, this will not stop me from making my annual offering to the Godesss.

 

Charlie

[Suebee]

Those signs must be fairly new...they werent there when we were there. At least the areas we were.

[sceptic]

The offerings to Pele don't include rock piles, to the best of my knowledge. Typically they are ti leaves, some forms of alchohol, and a few other such items (supposedly money too).

 

I think one reason they don't want you to build a rock pile is that these piles, called cairns, are also used as trail markers in many places in HVNP. If it's a foggy day with lousy visibility you basically travel from cairn to cairn to stay on trail (I know this from much personal experience). If you get to a cairn and see three or four piles in various directions, which is the trail, and which is some fun sculpture a visitor created?

 

And one thing about the CNN report. It's pretty ignorant, actually. It's not "Mount Kilauea." Just Kilauea. And the offerings aren't on the summit. They're at Halemaumau, which is the fire pit inside Kilauea's caldera. The actual summit is somewhere else on the cliffs above, between volcano house and the USGS volcano observatory. Sigh. What else do you expect from the national press?

[jerseyjk]

Those signs must be fairly new...they werent there when we were there. At least the areas we were.

 

To be fair, the only place I saw that sign (and just had to snap a photo) was at Halema'uma'u crater on the path to the observation area.

[Suebee]

That's good to know...we stayed up there 4 full days so I was racking my brain!

[daWoods]

To be fair, the only place I saw that sign (and just had to snap a photo) was at Halema'uma'u crater on the path to the observation area.

:I saw that sign in February. It wasn't there 2 years ago when we visited.