Story by Alan D. McNarie Photos by Olivier Koning It’s early
afternoon on the rim of Kilauea caldera, and three tour buses
are parked in the lot outside the Jaggar Museum. The Japanese,
German and American tourists who crowd the museum ooh at a bank
of seismographs tracing the zigzagging lines of microearthquakes
on rolls of paper and don’t notice the distinguished scientist
in their midst. Jim Kauahikaua, dressed in a faded T-shirt and
shorts and sporting a shaggy mane of black hair, threads his way
quietly through the crowd to the observation terrace, then steps
over a low wall of lava blocks and slips in the back entrance of
a building next door notable only for its airport-like
observation tower. This is the hub of Hawai‘i’s oldest
observatory, and Kauahikaua is its longtime director. “I’ve been
here forever,” he muses. “I’ve been on staff since ’88. I worked
here off and on since the ’70s.” This building is probably the
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory’s least important component; the
vitals are the scores o