Standing at the airport in Hilo, Mason and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by nibbling a box of ginger cookies. They were the first food I’d been able to stomach all morning. I quivered with nerves.

Jessica, the sole member of the “ground crew,” handed each of us a yellow pouch to wrap around our waists. It contained a life vest. 

“Just like the airlines,” she said. “If you need to use it, take your headset off first, then put the vest over your head. Don’t inflate it until you’re in the water. Otherwise, you’ll have trouble getting out of your seat. If you can’t dog-paddle for long, inflate one side before you jump out of the helicopter. You won’t need the vest,” she promised.  “We haven’t lost anyone yet.”

She led us across the tarmac to our helicopter. Over our heads, the rotor flickered black against the bright blue sky. She opened the cockpit door and gestured for us to climb up beside the pilot.

“Do you want the window?” Mason shouted.

“I’d rather be on the inside.” Or so I thought. After I hauled myself up, I realized I couldn’t brace my feet against the instrument panel directly in front of my knees.

In fact, the cockpit was a tight fit for the three of us. On my right, Mason figured out how the shoulder harness clipped to his seatbelt. To my left sat Tim the pilot, a big blond man who probably played football on weekends. He wore a navy polo shirt, khaki shorts, and dock-siders with no socks. He waved hello.

Jessica handed up headsets. The heavy earphones, cushioned with foam, muffled the rotor noise. A mouthpiece swiveled in front of my jaw. Jessica indicated a toggle on the dashboard. Yikes. If it meant touching anything on the control panel, I didn’t need to talk.

As a mic check, Tim pointed out the fire extinguisher strapped by his left leg. I hoped I wouldn’t have to go over him to get it. Beneath Mason’s seat hid the first aid kit. I was more frightened than I’d ever been in my life. When my feet had been safely on the ground, riding in a helicopter over a volcano had seemed like a wonderfully romantic excursion. Now I prayed we wouldn’t die.

With the faintest wobble, we got underway. Zooming forward, the helicopter rose into the air. Just like that, my mood changed. My heart soared. I love to fly. This smooth takeoff seemed like magic. Maybe this situation wasn’t so dire after all…

Then I realized that Tim had no door on his side. The wind tugged my long hair in every direction. I envisioned putting out the pilot’s eye with a stray lock. I lunged forward to rummage in my bag for an elastic. My mouth felt alarmingly parched.

Tim banked toward the eastern side of the island. The door beside Mason popped open and swung wide.

“I thought they’d fixed that,” Tim said calmly over the headsets. “Try to slam it shut.”

Mason reached out for the door. I clung to his arm. I’d been so worried about whether the helicopter would crash into the volcano or fall into the ocean that I hadn’t been able to sleep last night or eat this morning. It never occurred to me that Mason would plummet without me into the jungle.

“No worries,” Tim said. “As long as he’s clipped in, there’s no way he can fall out.” To distract me, he said, “Look up ahead.”

The cone of Mauna Loa loomed above the jungle. Huge, black, and ominous, the “long mountain” looked like an irritable old woman hunkered down under a black cloak. From a crater on the volcano’s flank flowed steam as white as gossamer hair, surrounded by an uneven shield of rock like an upturned collar.

We circled the crater, trying to see past the rising steam. Tim warned us that he wouldn’t take any chances with the scalding hot vapor. If the wind shifted the cloud toward us, he would “run away.” Consequently, while he watched the steam, we needed to search for hot lava below us. He couldn’t pay attention to both things at once. Once we saw molten stone below, he’d hover if he thought it was safe to do so.

Tim encouraged me to lean across him to look down. Inside the crater, I glimpsed bright orange. “You’re looking into the center of the earth,” Tim explained. “See anything?”

Excitement shivered through me. I reached forward to toggle on my mic for the first time. “Something’s burning down there.”

“There’s nothing to burn,” Tim corrected. He tilted the copter so we could see straight down.

Bubbles of lava swelled and burst, throwing spindles of molten rock into the air. I clutched Mason’s hand, too thrilled to speak.

Semisolid rock congealed over part of the crater, like skin on tomato soup. The half-cooled rock looked gray as ashen charcoal. In contrast, the liquid rock burned bright as the molten steel I’d seen on a foundry tour as a child.

“Let’s follow it to the ocean,” Tim suggested, pulling us away.

Puffs of white steam like twists of cotton candy sprouted from the barren plain where the last flow had frozen years before. We trailed the steam plumes, telltales of a vein of lava gushing to the sea. In places, the lava tube had caved in, forming skylights that revealed the hellish river of rock streaming below. Tim said the ceiling above the lava kept changing, collapsing and sealing back up. Even when he flew seven tours a day, he never got bored because he never knew what he’d see from trip to trip.

Ahead of us, the plain abruptly dove into the blue ocean. Dense white steam ascended like a diagonal ladder, marking the area where Mother Earth expanded the margins of the Big Island. Buzzing along the coastline, we stopped to hover where tongues of orange flickered between the black stone, blue water, and white steam. Fire, earth, water, air: the four elements constantly skirmished here. While we watched, new land breathed the air and saw the sun for the first time.

My fear of helicopters evaporated. Nowhere else in the world would I rather have been. There was nothing I would have rather seen, and no one with whom I would have rather shared it.

Mason kissed me. Even after all our years of marriage, I never know what gift he will surprise me with next. Whether ginger cookies or a helicopter ride in Hawaii, he always knows what I’ll like better than I do.

Squeezing his hand, I asked, “What will we do for our next adventure?”

Toggling on his microphone, he said, “For our thirtieth anniversary, let’s take a rocket to the moon.”