Snap By Snap

Most signs are ignored, of course. The sign below is as clear as can be and yet we spent our entire vacation watching visitors ignore its warning and stalk wild animals. Now, I have to admit that we have been known to ignore safety signs (see below) from time to time, but fortunately we had done a lot of research for this vacation. We'd watched videos produced by the National Park Service on wildlife safety that show park visitors being gored, trampled, torn apart, and otherwise having their vacations ruined by buffalo, elk, and bears. After those videos, Mark could hardly get me to go on a hike! And when I did go, I had a bear bell and bear spray to keep me safe.

 

In 1971, Dad, Grandma and I went on a vacation to Missouri. On the way we visited the Royal Gorge in Colorado. As we drove along the parkway, I spied a buck lying down in the woods not far off the road and begged my Dad to stop and let me feed it. Now, Dad must have seen a sign like the one above, because he said no. At that time it had been about three months since Mom died, and I have been told by eyewitnesses that I was a complete pill that summer. I probably threw a fit, although I don't remember. What I do remember is that when we pulled into the gift shop area down the road, my Grandma had a rare moment of being on my side (or of being sick of traveling with an unhappy ten year old), and bought me a package of yellow cheese crackers. She made Dad drive back to the spot, and I got to feed the buck. And I survived.

My strongest memory of this event was not the feeding of the buck, but Grandma's kindness to me.

I'm not sure how old you have to be before you realize your own mortality and begin to take warning signs seriously. Maybe around 30? Mark and I were 27 and 28 when we went to Hawaii to celebrate his doctoral degree. On the big island of Hawaii we found a road completely blocked off by a lava flow, and found it irresistable. We could see plumes of steam in the distance where the lava was still flowing into the ocean. There was a no trespassing sign, but everyone else was doing it, so . . .

We hiked a couple of miles out over rough lava rock, past the sad remains of swallowed houses and cars. It was an adventure! As we got closer to the steam plumes, we could hear the explosions as hot lava hit the ocean. You could even see bits of lava and earth being blasted into the air.The tiny figure in the background of the picture below is about where we hiked to . . .

. . . before we looked down at a fissure at our feet and saw . . .

red hot lava flowing directly beneath us. It was a moment of crystal clarity. We suddenly understood the  'no trespassing' signs and decided it probably wasn't safe to hang around. And besides, our tennies were getting a little hot . . . that couldn't be good.

Later that week, as we ate our breakfast of fresh papaya and banana bread at our hotel, we read a local newspaper report that a tourist had been killed at the lava flow where we had been. Once in a while the lava flow slackens a little, and the ocean water rushes into the lava tubes. When the hot lava meets cold water under the cliff, the resulting explosion blasts off sections of cliff, along with anyone standing on it. Yep, I think that's about when we started paying attention to signs.

The Sign song is so very 1971. Here's that last verse:

Which makes me think of church signs. That would be a complete blog entry all by itself, so I'll just leave you with this one: