June 28 - May 18 2012 / Hawaii: Ancient Culture, Ever-Renewing Land
In Which We Visit Three Islands, and See the Transit of Venus Across the Sun
Part 4 - On Maui: More Hiking in the Volcanic Landscape
A mess of a day, mostly spent in transit until the luau at the end of it. Various difficulties with luggage, rental cars, directions, and etc., and arriving at this condo I felt so disappointed because our “view” is of somebody else’s concrete roof—a few plants here and there, and no sight at all of the water. I guess I sort of knew that, but after our wonderful connectedness to the ocean in the other places, this is a shock. We have no privacy on our tiny lanai at all. Plus it turns out the mattress is terrible. Oh well.
But we found our way to the Old Lahaina Luau, to which we had been 21 years ago and from which we will never forget the arrival at water’s edge of the warrior in his canoe, with his torch aflame. They don’t do that anymore; it is four times larger than before, and they have moved to a new location.
Handsome beautifully tattooed boys serve your drinks and remember your name. The ceremonial pig is removed from the imu (cooking pit), and everyone watches. Crafts are made and sometimes sold around the grounds, and people take pictures or learn how to make leis. We were seated close to the performing stage, with a large family from Colorado, who we decided afterwards were doubtless capital-C Christians (although they didn’t pray before their food, but they had that air).
The dancing and talk story were good, in some cases mesmerizing, especially the chanting which began it. I have no idea how the women do that with their hips, their torsos upright and motionless and their hips twitching and rolling continuously. The men too, the dancers, shaking their thighs and rolling their hips. Everyone in leaves.
The narrator told the story of how the missionaries came and first covered everybody up (in the heat and humidity!) and then shut down the hula. There were a couple of dances in which they wore the absurd full-length, covered-arms outfits, Victorian in design. Yes, religion has a lot to answer for.
I was happy to see that they did not do the cheer-leader’s twirling routine with the fiery torches that we saw at the Royal Kona.
I enjoyed it. But somehow the magic of the simpler one was gone. Of course, that was the first time I had seen anything like it, and I had never seen the elegant geometric tattoos with which the men ornamented themselves, until that time. So it was all new. That is the problem of experience: things are not new.
And I thought it was our anniversary, and gave John his card, carefully carried from home. I wasn’t feeling that good, but I felt good to give it to him, and love him. Those newly-weds we met yesterday at the luau have no idea what it is all about. Not yet. Yesterday I said, that is the problem with experience, that things are not new. Well, after forty-two years we have plenty of experience and it is all good.
We went to walk up to view Iao’s Needle. Up a valley, first light rain and then steady, warm rain. I loved it. The needle is 2250 feet high, and is a volcanic formation—the last time it erupted around here was about 300 years ago, but the evidence is of course still here. There were clouds around us and it was deliciously chill, a bit, and wet.
it wasn’t a hike, at all, all of it being paved, but it was beautiful and put me in a much better frame of mind.
We admired some marvelous large trees, by a rushing stream, and read how there had been a great battle hereabouts, between King Kamehameha and others, when he was trying to dominate all the islands. There were corpses here. I said to John that it was strange to think of battles here, and he said, There have been battles everywhere, and I guess that is true, too bad.
Back to Lahaina to have lunch and I had a milkshake, they have them here and they are wonderful; I could live on them. We went to view the great Banyan Tree. It was only eight feet tall when imported from India and planted here in 1873 to mark the 50th year of the arrival of the missionaries. I would think that is not something to celebrate.
It is now over sixty feet tall and has twelve major trunks in addition to its huge main trunk, and it shades 2/3rds of an acre. It is one of the largest in the world. I was happy to see people paying attention to it; they hardly ever pay attention to plants.
There are beaches all along this coast, and people playing at them, setting up small camps, surfing, playing. The beaches are very narrow but also not very violent (unlike what we saw from the lanais of both our other condos), and they seem mostly pebbles or small rocks. But people love them and play on them.
Tomorrow we will leave very early and drive to Haleakala and hike. It’s noisy and hot at this condo and I want to spend most of our time away from it.
Up early this morning, there are so many birds calling around here, especially the doves of several kinds, I love it. Packed up a small lunch, got into our hiking stuff, and drove across the sugar caned landscape to the sinuous road up to Haleakala. We left below the fields of light green sugar cane, the little houses, traffic lights, highways. I don’t really remember all that from 21 years ago.
Twisting and winding and switchbacking its way up the mountain, the largest extinct volcano in the world I think I have read, and it has not erupted since 1790. There were pastures and eucalyptus trees along the way, wonderful plain vistas of rounded hills and small groves of trees, and grassy pastures, a few cattle guards but no cattle. Partway up, the ranger station where we got a trail map, and then for the first hike, just about two miles altogether, nothing much, but leading to a wonderful view of the crater, and the trail leading far down into it (a hike we did when we were youngsters in our 50’s).
I love the plants along the trail and recognize the families of some of them—heaths and hawkweed and vaccinium and there is something (which turns out to be in the geranium family) which has the same silvery leaves as silversword; looking closely you can see the soft silver hairs. There are some insects but nothing dramatic, and no other wildlife. We see into the dead caldera where lava flowed so long ago, and still black, and still obvious.
HOW did the early people live here?? There would have been constant threats from geology, all over the islands. You would have to learn, in your tribal memory and stories, where not to build anything, and when to hurry away. Threats not only from the geology but also from the sea, tsunamis arriving mysteriously from earthquakes beyond the horizons. I have just finished reading in the Times about how wreckage is now coming to our shores from the recent terrible Japanese tsunami, carrying all sorts of unwelcome invasive creatures. Of course, in ancient Hawaii they would not have had the concept of “invasive” species that crowd out the native things—because everything that arrived was doubtless put to use.
So we did that hike and then went up to the visitors’ center on the summit. There we had lunch on a bench and talked and joked with a ranger who was picking up trash. We exchanged funny tourist stories—oh rats, now I forget her best one.
And then off down the Sliding Sands Trail, that in 1991 we had done all of, but this time only maybe went down a mile or so. Enough though, to see the other-worldly look of it, the gracious curves of colored rock debris of pink, red, ochre, purple, mauve, white, black, orange, rose. It seems this is not a volcanic thing, after all, not a crater, but formed instead by erosion, and wind and water, and there were eruptions from lateral vents which have formed cinder cones, but the big eruption, the summit of the past, is long gone and instead leaves us these extraordinary scenes of color and form. One side is all greys and green, black and white; the other half, the larger part actually, is glowing color. All of it looks alluring but forbidding. I well remember, well remember, how we ate our lunch way down in there, around a little pile of rock, and on the other side of it I found a fresh lei. Fresh flowers. An offering for Pele. This time we can’t go that far, but we can still admire it all.
Slowly, very very very slowly back up (altitudes of 10K feet at the top, and I’m ever-watchful these days).
Driving back down, cloud rushes across the road and up the mountain. Near the bottom, it begins to rain, and then rains tremendously hard, and just at that time we are driving through a narrow part of the road with a small road-cut there into a hill of dirt and rock, and the waters are cascading and rushing off this hill, and some of it has collapsed onto the road, and there is nowhere to go but onward lest it get even worse and impede our small car. I am scared! But we get through it all right, although we see a police car coming up the road possibly to monitor things, for there are still people up on the mountain.
There’s a line of deep gray across the horizon, and below it the blue sky, and blue sea.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to live here.
Our next to last day and I have prevailed on John to drive the famous Hana Highway; last time we were here I let him off the hook but this time I gave him all the stuff to read about it and he said he was game. It has 600+ turns, most of them hairpin-type, and 56 one-lane bridges. And this after the sinuating drive up and down Haleakala yesterday.
It begins as most of our driving here has, with time between the pale green sugar cane grasses. Left and right, and sometimes the deep red soil. Maui is shaped like a dumbbell, with a bulb at either end, of mountains (to the left of us where the Needle of Iao is, and to the right, the great Haleakala). We are on the south side of the “handle”; last time we were here I think we stayed on the other side.
To get to Hana from Kihei we drive up the handle and to the right, once again as yesterday taking a tiny short-cut on Hansen Road, which is an old road, not a highway, and which shows us a tiny glimpse of the real world of Hawaii, the working, messy sugar world, now past on the other islands but still operating here. When I get home I will try to find out more about it.
We pass through little Pa’ia, once of historical interest but, overrun with tourists, no more, at least not to those of us with only a brief time here.
Our time here will be brief.
We start along the road. What can I say? Today I got my green fix! Somehow the other places we have spent most of our time have been on the dry side of each island, but today we are on the wet, green, abundant side, and I am happy.
We stop first at Twin Falls, set up for tourists but not oppressively so, and there are people at play in the water, and walking among the riotous abundance of plants, so beautiful in their greens and reds, and their various forms of large, huge, enormous, and small, or tiny, leaves. Their uttering forth of flowers of yellow and red, some white. It all makes me smile, and others are smiling, too. It seems the happiest place I have been to on this trip, with everyone smiling at each other, and greeting each other, playing in the water, watching the water, seeking the water, and admiring the plants whether they know they are or not.
We are side by side with private property; a large gate alongside the path is discreetly woven with palm branches, to disguise its ugliness.
The driving is hard, nerve-wracking, and we miss the turnoffs for some of the places I had thought to stop. An unmistakable mongoose goes across the road, about a foot or so long, tiny short little legs on him, and a kind of squirrelish tail going low behind. Should’ve hit ‘im, says John—they are the eaters of everything endemic here. Before the day is over we see several more crossing the road, setting out from the side and walking across, and once, a dead one.
The marvelous road (built in 1927 with convict labor, and how they built it I cannot imagine, since it clings to steep pali [cliffs] and caresses every single fluting of the land, up and down and around and around)—it gives stunning scenes of the cornflower blue ocean below, and sometimes the ruffles of waves breaking on black rock (the only kind of rock they have here—a strange thought) and once, far below, a small black sand pocket beach.
The road opens and closes ahead, first open to bits of land thick with vegetation, then closing with tall trees—eucalyptus perhaps—overhanging the road, and bamboo groves so thick that light does not penetrate them.
We stop again at Kaumahina Wayside, and after admiring the ocean view head into the forest on a small trail. Great eucalyptus trees stretch overhead and by the sides of the rooty little trail. Enormous startling philodendron vines climb up the huge trunks and the size of everything is faintly alarming. This, after all, is the same ordinary philodendron found in your average dish garden or languishing in someone’s waiting room or office cubicle. Here it is a thing of glory and power. All is green around me, and white above. Green Trail indeed…the tangled bank, plants, the varied strands of their existence lying on and over and around and under each other, each discrete from end to growing end, but all tangled together in a rioting pattern.
Back at the parking area, here is an orange striped tiger feral, drinking from a large bowl perhaps put there by someone at the wayside, and another just like him comes onto the scene at a distance; First Cat looks up and observes, but goes back to drinking.
For a lunch stop there’s another small pulloff, at a little waterfall, and with tables. We eat the last of our peanut butter, and some cookies and the last of the applesauce, and drink water, and watch people just having to get TO and IN the water, however they can.
It’s nearly noon, and John is tired; there are hundreds, really, of somewhat hair-raising corners around which one cannot see, and in which are no lines to show you your place, because the road is so narrow. I love the road, but I am not driving it. So just after we pass the Welcome to Hana sign, we turn around.
We’ve beaten the rush—going back, all the places we stopped, and all the other places of interest (i.e. anywhere there is a trickle of a waterfall!) are infested with cars and we could not have parked at any of them. I feel a bit grumpy, but I get over it, and John gets over his irritation at having to do this intense driving. Because it all goes so much more easily on the way back.
And this time we get to stop to see the Painted Bark Trees. It is I believe a kind of eucalyptus, very tall, very robust, smooth pale bark which has peeled into fantastic colors: chartreuse, orange, yellow, lavender. I spot them and we are able to pull over into a wide place. Immediately a truly handsome rooster and his lady approach the car for handouts. They are not very shooable-away, and as we photograph and admire their trees, I keep one eye on them.
Beautiful birds, beautiful trees. Rainbows, both.
Later, in Pa’ia, doing a little shopping on the way home, I buy a fine photograph of these trees. This image will stay with me. I also bought a painting of the sugar mill, and of the not-a-crater at Haleakala, only not in sunlight, but perhaps at dusk. Each of these images has layers of meaning for me.
Yes, this time I have questions about the Hawaiians, those first ones. And I want to know more about them. Why did they set out from their homes? What all did they bring (there are so-called “canoe plants” that I would like to know about)? How did they travel, and how long did it take, and how did they manage when they got here? But no one will ever know I guess, not really.
I just begin to know enough about a place to have questions about it, and it is time to go.
Investigating online, I learn that the Eucalytus deglupta, the rainbow tree, sheds strips of bark at different times. The fresh, inner bark is chartreuse, and that darkens over time first to blue, then purple, then orange, and finally maroon.
This marvelous organism is grown to be cut down, ground up, mixed with water, and made into paper…
Early this morning we drove to Maleaea Harbor and got on our snorkeling boat. They had a nice breakfast array for us—muffins and coffee and fruit and other things—and we sat up on the top deck in the blazing sun, all covered up we were although few others were. We spent an hour going over to Molokini, the tiny crescent of an island which is the edge of an old caldera and which is now a marine sanctuary.
I now have my snorkeling routine—clothing, accoutrements, how to do things—down so well. I suit up and, nervous as always when first entering the water, go in. Instantly my face is in the water and I see the bottom (or whatever there is to see), I am calm, happy, alert, and excited. There are some fair fish though nothing really extraordinary, but as usual I don’t really mind what I see as long as, thank you Lord, I am doing it again.
There is quite a crowd of people in the water and I have to protect my head from them sometimes. I am amused to see that at least two thirds of them seem not to really be snorkeling at all but to be feet down and head out of the water and chatting with each other. A weird thing. I recognize some of the fish from Guam.
Then after this place there is a nice lunch, and then we get to go in again at so-called Turtle City. Too many people again, but I follow a lava tongue along, and in its crevices find some good stuff, a trumpet fish, a small pufferfish, and others. I have about given up on the turtles, when I hear lots of shrieks and cries and when I look up from the water briefly I see a bunch of people who are all yelling. Turtle, I think, and as I put my face back into the water sure enough, a huge lovely green sea turtle (with its brown back) swings effortlessly in his element, appearing from my left, slicing in front of me and off to my right. A huge animal! Well I’m happy I am. Big old sea turtle, swimming along in his place, and I got to see him.
And home to our condo, we take a nap, we resign ourselves to packing, and pack. I fix our gala farewell dinner of boiled potatoes, minute steak, and leftover frozen peas, and the remainder of the ice cream. We sit out on the dark lanai and watch the light disappear from the sky, and from over the mountain, and the twinkling red lights of the wind farm sparkle.
And to bed.
I have many questions now, most of them unanswered, about this place, its people, the land itself which is much easier to understand, but the human history is mysterious. Even the plants and animals are easier to understand, their origins and all, than the human history. I want to know about the canoe plants, the indigenous, the endemic, the introduced and invasives. And those biomes, the thirteen of them and the ten or eleven that Hawaii has. Where they are.
I want to comb through each day’s experiences for more detail, the pictures will help me. For I never had my words on this trip, never had them at all. Only once in a while I got a brief connection, I guess I didn’t spend much time looking for words. Exact words. I will try more when I get home.
So many ways that our fellow creatures have found to make a living. These, out in the terrible middle of maybe the biggest bunch of contiguous water in the entire universe.
John says no. Well, I just bet there is nothing like this anywhere in the universe, anyhow.