With the origin stories of Bob Dylan playing at the movies and “Dexter” streaming from TV, the spectacular new eruption of Halemaumau Crater got me pondering my own professional origins on the Big Island.

In 1967 my Hilo College debate team returned from a Honolulu tournament to news that Halemaumau was erupting for the first time in years.

We piled into our professor’s van and excitedly drove the 30 miles up Kilauea Volcano.

At Halemaumau’s viewing stand, my attention was drawn to a tall man hanging tenuously to the safety rail, trying to get a closer picture of the steaming crater with his unwieldy Rolleiflex camera.

“Look at that crazy guy,” somebody said.

My debate teammate Leanne Bryan said, “That’s my dad. He’s the Big Isle reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.”

“Hmmm,” I mused, “now there’s an interesting job.”

I gave it no more thought until months later when Jack Bryan posted a hiring notice on the campus bulletin board for an intern to write obituaries, divorces and other briefs. I had the disadvantage of having never taken a journalism class but the advantage of being the only applicant.

I learned well enough that Jack helped get me a weekend reporting job at the Star-Bulletin when I transferred to Manoa to finish my history degree, which led to full-time work covering City Hall and the Legislature.

When Jack was promoted to a post in Honolulu, I got his job on the Big Isle, and soon it was me hanging off rails, from trees and out the open doors of small airplanes trying for the perfect photo of Kilauea’s pyrotechnics.

You get so obsessed with the picture that you have to beware forgetting the dangers.

I was shooting lava trees being formed by a slow-moving pahoehoe flow taking some ohia and didn’t notice the lava creeping up on me until I smelled the rubber feet of my tripod smoking.

Leaning out the door of one of those small planes, I pressed the pilot to get closer to the fountaining. Nearing the hot spot, rising heat abruptly shot the little plane straight up. As I dislodged my heart from my throat, the pilot asked, “Close enough?”

Once I stupidly peeled off from a media group being led by a national park ranger to a safe viewing site, hoping to get a little closer. I turned around a rock formation and suddenly the lava fountains were RIGHT THERE. I snapped a few shots before running like hell, and they were my best ever.

Sometimes, especially at night, I’d pause from taking pictures and interviewing geologists to just stare in wonder at the magnificence before me.

That’s what stoked my memories with the latest eruption — news photos of tiny human forms silhouetted against spectacular nighttime lava fountains. I’ve been the photographer and the little silhouette being photographed.

I didn’t always agree with those protesting the Mauna Kea telescopes, but I shared their belief in the sanctity of Big Island volcanoes.

When you walk on those mountains, especially as they come to life, you feel immersed in a spiritual power you never forget.

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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.