LAVA AND VOLCANOES

My Lava

A few months ago I came home from a three-hour trip doing errands.  Gruesome surprise on the stove:  I accidentally made LAVA while I was gone!  At least it looked like lava.  Apparently I was careless when I left, not quite turning off the hummingbird syrup I was heating on the stove.  The pot was so hot it scorched the porch banister when I put it out to cool.  After it cooled, I touched it.   Hard as rock.  And the lid was glued to the black concoction.

After I prayed in gratitude that the house was still standing, I took the pot (lid attached at a jaunty angle) out behind the garage. 

When Marguerite and I were in Iceland, August 2012, our guide said it took 200 years for moss to begin growing on newly formed lava.   So I decided to do an experiment.  Every month or so I’d photograph my lava to see when something began to grow on it.

Cooled Lava Ripples

When we toured around Iceland, we saw dark pointy fields of lava with hardly a green thing to be seen.  Bleak.  Hard to walk on.  Iceland was formed around 25 million years ago, which makes it one of the youngest landmasses on the planet.   Like the islands of Hawaii, it was formed by volcanoes.  There are 35 active volcanoes on Iceland.

 I inquired on-line about moss and Icelandic lava fields, asking whether my memory of the guide’s report was correct.  “Depends on conditions and altitude. It has taken the moss in Eldhraun 232 years to become what it is today. But it has taken the moss in Svínahraun (just east of Reykjavik) 1016 years to be what it is today. In many places you can see moss begin to grow after only 4 - 10 years (Eldhraun). But in other areas there is no moss after thousands of years.”

Moss is beautiful and soft and green.  I think it allows soil to begin growing on lava because it holds water like a sponge.  Maybe someone can write more about that in the “Comments” section below.  

On a forum about Icelandic moss, a writer was incensed because s/he thought Justin Bieber had run rough shod over their moss.  You can check out this little video he released to see whether you agree:  http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/11/02/justin-bieber-releases-music-video-shot-iceland.

Recently Erupted Eyjafjallajokull

 Molten rock below the surface of the Earth that rises in volcanic vents is known as magma, but after it erupts from a volcano it is called lava. The magma comes from tens of miles underground.  Some volcanoes become mountains.  The USGS reports, “Volcanoes are mountains but they are very different from other mountains. They are not formed by folding and crumpling but by uplift and erosion. Instead, volcanoes are built by the accumulation of their own eruptive products.”

Another reason to be thinking of lava is my January 2016 trip to Hawaii.  We’ll go for an evening field trip to see an erupting volcano: “Halemaumau continues to thrill visitors with a vivid glow that illuminates the clouds and the plume as it billows into the night sky.”   Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, lives there.

Naturally I wondered whether our North Georgia mountains started out as volcanoes.  Nope.  Our Georgia mountains were formed by the plate-tectonic collision of continents that built the Appalachians about 300 million years ago. When North America and Africa collided, the compression where they met shoved sheets of sedimentary rock over each other.

Marguerite and I in Iceland.  Whale-watching in August on the Sea.

I hope I’ll learn more about the differences between Hawaii and Iceland beyond the obvious difference in temperature. I’ll be sure to make notations in this blog so stay tuned.  Meantime, there’s a narrative by David Merrill on differences between Hawaii and Iceland:  http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dam/Writing/Hawaii_Iceland.html.

By the way, I saw my neurologist this week.  She said I do not have a demented brain, just one injured by four concussions.  

Still No Moss But the Lid Fell Off

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