“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m a gonna go when the volcano blows...”

You probably know the song “Volcano” by Jimmy Buffett unless you have been living under some cave away from popular music. My freshman college roommate from Hilton Head loved to play Buffett’s “Songs You Know By Heart” while getting ready for a night on the town.

Volcanoes are an entirely different matter when you are walking over a lake where lava once flowed freely. I learned this firsthand during three days exploring Hawaii volcanoes while on vacation last week.

I spent my first afternoon in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Kilauea Iki Trail. This 4-mile hike descended 400 feet through a native rain forest into a crater. I walked across lava flows still steaming from the 1959 eruption in the most active volcano in North America.

There are park areas like Devastation Trail where lava from a volcanic eruption burned everything in its path. It is an indescribable feeling to walk on uneven rock surfaces and see how land masses have been formed for thousands of years.

No visit to the volcano park is complete without a trip through an underground lava tube.

My parents and I were among 12 people lucky enough to participate in the Pua Po’o Lava Tube Tour mentioned in my last column. The location is a carefully guarded secret by park employees because of the fragile life forms growing inside the lava tube.

The 6-mile hike involves climbing down a 15-foot ladder into the lava tube and scrambling over sharp, slippery rocks. I walked about 25 feet in a crouched position at one point, watching tiny spiders climbing on thin webs inside crevices barely visible to the naked eye.

A visit to an underground lava tube would not be complete without a few minutes in complete darkness.

Ranger Dean Gallagher took a picture of each party above a large pile of rocks shortly before the hike ended.

After the pictures were over, the ranger had each person in the hiking group write in a cave diary about our experience. We were asked to write down the name of an actor we wanted to play us in a movie if we didn’t make it out alive.

I wrote down Johnny Depp. He seems to share my strange sense of humor and taste for adventure.

Fortunately for Johnny Depp, he won’t have to worry about playing me.

I’m still here.

The lava tube is one of many stories I have from my 10-day trip to Hawaii.

I will spend part of the Thanksgiving holidays “burning” photographs onto CDs from my vacation.

I hope to share some pictures from Hawaii with readers in the coming days.

I am calling this my version of a James Michener travel log, featuring an embedded reporter in paradise on an island 4,243 miles from the nearest land mass.

I find myself inspired by sports writer W.C. Heinz, author of “Mash” and the “Brownsville Bum” — one of the most widely circulated sports stories of all time. If I can take anything from Heinz’s mastery of the writing craft, I will be well on my way to being a better writer.

When I turn in my Hawaii story, I can assure you it won’t be a 30-page feature story like Heinz often wrote for magazines in the 1940s and 1950s.

Everyone knows a picture is worth a thousand words.

Scott Powell (spowell@gaffneyledger.com) covers education

issues for The Gaffney Ledger and is, on occasion, our resident

adventurer.