"Land of Fire and Rain"
Waimea Canyon from the West Rim
What happens when a dead grey moonscape of hot volcanic ash has hundreds
of thousands of years to compact, harden into tufa, and then erode in the rain?
The wind and birds bring in a whole new nature on their wings, and life
with a tenacity bordering on miraculous creates a unique new world. If you were
to cross those mountains in the distance, you would walk into a landscape so
verdant that it would feel as if you were not even on the same planet as this
canyon; but it would be the other side of the same volcano.
That terrain has been one of the wettest places on Earth with over 450
inches of rainfall a year since 1912 when records were first kept.
Kauai's mountainous center forms a rain shadow trapping most of the
wind-born moisture on the north and east sides of the island. The southwest
side, like the continental United States, is much more arid.
Since the same volcano made the soil that grows both the jungle and the
more sparsely vegetated Waimea Canyon, the dramatic difference is a powerful
model of how climate determines everything in an environment.
"Memory of a Distant Cloud"
How Rain Shapes an Unprotected Landscape
Many places on this planet have the combination of barren land and
occasional heavy rainfall. This allows the great aqua sculptor elbowroom
because what comes in a hurry and has no plant life sponge restraint, leaves in
a hurry taking with it anything that isn't, so to speak, "nailed
down."
The revelations that follow are some of the most spectacular places
on Earth. The Canyonlands and Grand Canyon of the Colorado, The Kali Gandaki
Gorge in Nepal, The Cotahuasi Canyon in Peru, and this Wiamea Canyon on the
Island of Kauai are all examples of the aqua sculptor’s craft. The horizontal
banding on the distant cliff faces reveals the many explosive eruptions that
made the magma and ash layer cake that forms the island.
