I was blessed to spend Valentine’s Day 1990 in Hawaii, and it was there that I discovered what was, to me, the most beautiful place on earth: Kalapana Black Sand Beach. Located on a remote part of the Big Island, it was not a tourist spot, and its isolation and sparse population allowed one to truly absorb the landscape. My words can never do justice to the beach’s vista of sky, sand, surf and coconut palms; indeed, these photos only hint at its treasures. One of its most unexpected delights was the flock of chickens and roosters that skittered through the grove of palms. I have been fortunate to see nature’s majesty in many locations, but no place has ever touched my soul, my spirit, quite like Kalapana did that day.

I feel doubly blessed to have visited when I did, as a few months later the volcano Kilauea erupted and its lava flow swallowed the beach. Now, some 25+ years later, the ocean is again turning Kalapana’s lava to sand. As Lao-Tzu said, “Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield…this is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”

There is a lesson there for all of us… Happy Valentine’s Day.