Hanalei: A living lullaby

Rain wakes me up in the middle of the night, a building rush of sound that holds its deepest note for no more than three minutes and then fades into the darkness. I am awakened by the sound, feel a cool breeze on my face from the open window by the bed. There is no other sound at first. Then I hear a low, soft, muffled and distant rhythm: the waves on Hanalei Bay's beach. Then, I drift off to sleep again.

In the morning, something awakens me again from my sleep. Or many things do, all of them the small noises of creatures and life stirring. I have these early morning hours to myself as my husband sleeps. Time to imagine what I'll do in the day ahead, think of what we did the day before, and listen. 

The birds out in the garden are local, not island birds native to Kauai. Like full-blood Hawaiians, native birds are very rare now. Whatever variety they are, the songs and calls color the early hours of the day. 

As a short-term visitor here, I am a bit torn between a wish to just sit peacefully and a need to get out and do things. I imagine friends I talked to before the trip, asking me, "What are you going to DO when you're there?" 

"Well, nothing," was my reply. But I am very curious to go see, to be active and not just be a blob. Blobbishness, I tell myself, will be enjoyed after some kind of exploration is undertaken, by some mode other than car driving. I just have that need to move and feel myself alive in this paradise. There is a sense of excitement and thrill, being in a more exotic environment than my own home. I imagine myself some kind of rugged, fit athlete, able to climb, paddle and surmount physical challenges with aplomb. The truth is, I am some fainter shade of that colorful imaginary self at my age now, but I've got a lot of kick left in me. 

I sigh. We'll come up with a plan for the day, sketched in broad strokes, as we usually do. We've got a few things on a mental list that sound interesting or entertaining: Biking, hiking, swimming, body surfing. Boredom is to be avoided, but so is a frenetic pressured need to see and do all. We'll walk a line between them, I hope. 

I begin cutting up fresh pineapple, papaya and some sweet bread we bought yesterday at a farmer's market in Poipu while we were driving around. Coffee begins to brew and fill the small bungalow with its familiar aroma. It already feels like home here, easy to fall into a rhythm of our own. We sit at the table in the kitchen, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the birds in the yard. It's peaceful here. We are escapees from the ugliness and stress of modern life, way far away from anyone we know but also very safe, unchallenged except by any small bit of physicality we chose to throw into our own path. 

It's really a living lullaby in Hanalei for visitors like us. Times like this, I'm not certain at all I ever want to go home again.

Kauai Again

It takes no more than 20 minutes to fly, from liftoff to touchdown, from Honolulu to Lihue, Kauai, but the flight crew of  Hawaiian Airlines manages to hand out small juice cups up and down the aisle before we land. Nice touch.

Lihue airport is situated on the island like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier; it's on a flat shoulder of land that's like a shelf off the island's southwest curve. Kauai is here! Rather, we are here! Kauai has been here longer than any of the other habitable islands, the northernmost in the chain of Hawaiian Islands. It's the prettiest one, in my opinion, and it has the most chickens. Little factoid there, but I'll get to that later, in another post.

We round up our rental car, load up our stuff, drive away to the south shore, opposite direction from our home town for the week, Hanalei. It's too early to check in, so we've decided to explore. Most visitors to this island beeline for the south and stay in Poipu. In the winter, it's drier, warmer, and all the big resorts are here. We are hungry and look up best bets for good local grinds, choose a popular hamburger chain, head for it, find it, and then smell garlic. Hmmmm. I poke around a bit and find a place called Savage Scampi and my mouth waters vigorously. After some, ahem, discussion (he wants a burger), we go to the shrimp place. It seems more authentically good. A few thousand people have turned the walls into a giant yearbook of sorts by writing messages to the owners all over the walls, floor to ceiling.

He orders a fish taco dish, and I order a scampi-and-rice dish that comes piled up with garlic, garlic and more garlic. I have to peel the scampi, but it's good. I'm happy. We eat with fine appetites and then go poke around Koloa, an old sugar mill company town now given over to touristed trinket shops and food places.

The one main reason we drive to and from Koloa is the chance to go along the so-called tunnel of trees. The trees are tall, grand, overhang the highway and border the road on both sides for miles. They were stripped of all leaves and most small branches during Hurricane Iniki in 1992 but have recovered wonderfully and form a living cathedral over much of the roadway. Along the same stretch of road, a dramatic panorama catches my eye, a cattle ranch. Its spread of trees, backdrop of volcanic ridges and hills, as well as the open plain of grasses is rugged and natural in appearance, a testament to the beauty of nature if left mostly alone.

It's time to head up to Hanalei Bay and find our place. We were here two years ago, so the island is looking and feeling immediately familiar. The famous Princeville area with its many condo communities and golf courses sits on the high point above the bay to the northeast. Taro fields, a long curving scythe-shaped beach and spectacular mountains form a stage-backdrop setting for the little village of Hanalei. It's so perfectly tropically pretty and charming from every angle that even ugly is pretty. The dark red iron-rich soil tinges buildings, cars, the tree trunks and fence posts with its ochre red. Corrugated roofs built to withstand upwards of 25 inches of rain a year and hot sun as well are picturesque to me. Lush undergrowth and tall beautiful trees with flowers in their canopies give way at times to reveal craggy and jagged peaks in every view on the mauka side of the road.

Our bungalow is a vacation rental that we have completely to ourselves for the week. There's no maid service. Just us. I find it to be in total contrast to our Waikiki hotel. It's very quiet, simple, old-fashioned in some respects, but our wifi hookup is far better than we had at our last hotel. In defense of better hotels on Oahu, wifi is generally no problem, but it seems like a kind of voodoo security system is evolving there to the point that it's sometimes very hard to find cell-friendly areas with adequate signals for smart phone use. But, I digress.

We take a walk after settling in. The sandy expanse of Hanalei Bay is about a five-minute walk away. The sand is soft, warm brown and easy to walk on. My guess is from one end to the other might be about three miles. We walk around and wade in the warm water when the waves rush up onto the beach. Without suits on, we are just up to our ankles only. We'll begin our exploration tomorrow in earnest. Right now, softening into the rhythm of the place is all that's required. Wow, is it pretty.

Big Waves, Big Dreams: The Wave by Susan Casey

I'm in the middle of a book called The Wave by Susan Casey.  I picked it up after reading an excerpt of it in Sports Illustrated a few months ago.  What a great promo, eh? - one most authors would die for.  

A nonfiction account of big-wave surfing and rogue waves as mentioned throughout history, The Wave is a fast-paced read.  There's a lively mix of scientific facts and angles related to wave energy, occurrences observed by mariners in recent times and also the exploits of surfers who search the world for the jumbo-jack waves that rival most towns' tallest buildings in height.

What I'm interested as I read the book is the singular focus of individuals, that they're sparked by one certain idea, how they are forever after spurred by the same inspiration and vision for the rest of their careers.

Susan Casey took five years to write the book, including a very stressful period when her own father had died.  The perseverance and determination that she found to complete the project mirrored the same qualities in the men she wrote about, especially Laird Hamilton, the most famous of big-wave riders.  I first became aware of him after watching Riding Giants, a movie about surfers who go after the behemoth waves everyone else runs from.

Hamilton grew up in Kauai, basically in the area where we stayed just last week.  I might have seen him surfing when the waves got big toward the end of our stay; he moves his family back there every winter to be nearer to the likely big-wave surfing spots in case big storm surf rolls down from Alaska.  We watched stand-up paddlers taking on head-high waves in Hanalei Bay; not an easy thing to do for a beginner surfer.  Hamilton has been fascinated with huge waves and has spent countless hours in the ocean on all sorts of surfing equipment, spurred by his intense drive to surf big waves and understand the forces of the sea and its currents.

The men who study wave science around the world are equally obsessed with their ideas and vision.  They spend decades determining the nuances of force, and they build wave models three-dimensionally as well as mathematically.  They must follow threads and layers of complication to extreme lengths before anything can be made sense of.

Reading this book has made me think of other men and women who found their calling early in life, perhaps in a split moment when an idea reared up and struck them.  I watch documentaries and read biographies of people gripped with the possibilities that lie within concepts they've had in a dream or vision or perhaps glimpsed during a conversation or while reading a book.  The universal thread is that the idea is instantaneous; the explanation or the journey on which they embark because of the initial idea is long, arduous and sometimes lumpy, but the best of them always seem to hew to the initial vision as it occurred at the outset.

A book like The Wave is a rapid read.  Though it offers a hero-worshiping look at one surfer and his friends, it stirs up my own imagination about giant waves the same way Moby Dick or 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea whipped up wild thoughts of sea beasts that could crush humans.  The surfers and scientists as well as the mariners and landlubbers who have witnessed the effects of outlandish waves give vivid accounts of their experiences in storm surf or on high seas. The amazing fact is that the waves themselves are so little understood - and consequently so difficult to predict - in this age of super computers and with so many brilliant thinkers attempting to do so.  Food for thought and interesting reading for the human vs big wave contrast and the unique glimpse into the minds and hearts of men driven by a dream.

(Note:  There is a certain controversial element of big-wave tow-in surfing that is not addressed in the book.  That is, the use of jet-skis to access the waves themselves.  Purists are concerned with the fact that jet-skis add a certain level of noise and water pollution to the ocean and allow entree to surf conditions that were inaccessible in former times when only paddling was used.  Tow-in surfing using jet skis is now banned at Ghost Tree near Pebble Beach, which is within boundaries of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.  Ghost Tree has had 50-ft waves during big storm surf and was becoming a legendary spot in its own right, like Mavericks up in Half Moon Bay.)

Good-bye to Kauai, Hello Again Waikiki

Today was transition day; time to shift attention and focus to other places.  We left Kauai today, but first we drove slowly from our little bungalow along the skinny winding and scenic road east to Hanalei Bay to feast our eyes one more time.

Waves were steaming into the bay from its outer reaches, long plume-bedecked rollers that kept on and on without collapsing or playing out.  The heavy rain from the day before had washed lots of silt into the bay and turned it brown.  Mist hung on the surrounding hills like lace, sun glittered on wet places and the ever-present rainbows arched left and right.

It's deceptive to see photographs of Hanalei and the north shore because most of them look brooding and overcast, but the air at this time of year is about 75 degrees.  Bikinis, shorts, t-shirts and water sports are worn all four seasons.  Actually, in Hawaii, like other tropical places, there is a wet season and there is a dry one.

I never know whether to just get up and go away from a place or person I love, quickly leaving to avoid prolonged good-byes or to linger and savor every last moment together.  As we walked out onto the Hanalei pier to watch the surfers and paddle boarders, it became obvious we were just going to have to say good-bye once and for all and get it over with.  We savored the views, trying to memorize every aspect and finally got into the car and drove away.  Fittingly, a downpour started and seemed to erase the scene just behind us for a while.

The flight to Oahu is brief; no time for in-flight service.  You zoom up and away into the face of the tradewind and then you land again.  In Waikiki, our last treat was to rent a room at the Park Shore Hotel to get a view of one more beautiful Hawaiian sunset before traveling to the mainland tomorrow.   We're here overnight to say hello and good-bye to our two loved ones once again.  They called us before the dramatic sunset quite hit its highest note.  Their community was going to be having a Christmas parade; did we want to see it?  Of course yes.  Christmas in Kaimuki would be just the right bookend to a holiday vacation.

The whole community, which lies about three miles southeast of Waikiki, was in the parade, or half of it was.  The other half watched, and so did we, while Santas in shorts, t-shirts and whimsical headgear paraded by.  A Santa waved to the parading kids and posed for me.  Cub scouts, Brownies, football teams and beauty princesses waved and yelled to friends.  Eventually, another Santa on a truck decorated in lights and holiday garlands rolled slowly by, followed by The Grinch who guarded a volcano fuming green smoke.

There go my countrymen, I thought, all these people who live in America, Hawaiian style.  They're parading happily down this street with their beautiful and precious little children, yelling Merry Christmas the same way every kid in America does, no matter their State or ethnicity.  Santa hats, reindeer noses, candy canes and Christmas carols - no matter the way the weather feels - it's the way we do it, we nutty Americans.

Then, it started raining again, so we ducked inside for Thai food - still another flavor of life in Hawaii.  The whole day felt like some sort of parade of images, gradually turning from one to another before my eyes.  Rainbows in Hanalei turned to our own flight's arc from Kauai to Oahu and then the descent of the winter sun down to the horizon.  Finally the bright smiles of cheering kids and waving Santas, all a patchwork of tropical colors and din of city noises.  What is it about life that we don't live it like a vacation all the time?

Kauai Talks Story Quietly

There is a thing you have to do as a traveler, and it may relate more to eastern philosophy than to western.  As much as you would like to think you're prepared for a new area after you've read and listened to stories of other travelers, you still have to let go and swing into the wild blue yonder without a rope, letting go attempts to control the outcome.  Then, it's you and the place, meeting each other.

Oftentimes we who believe we have a high standard of living impose ourselves on the universe and think we are conquering it, teaching it how we must be treated so that we will be comfortable and have the upper hand.  It's like teaching a dog to say hello in English.  Have you listened to it, heard what it had to say, in Dog?  Not really.  It has only learned to mimic what you wanted it to say.

I asked my friends what Kauai is like before I came here.  I asked them what to see, what they liked about it.

"It rains a lot, but it's pretty," they said.  One said, "You will be bored out of your mind in a week, guaranteed."

We got up this morning and felt soft, cool air on our skin and saw that the sky was covered with rain clouds.  A few small birds sang a lilting song, and a rooster crowed as if mimicking another rooster in jest.  I thought I heard it laugh afterward.  Then drops of water began a random patter on the lanai awning that grew to a steady downpour.  The rain sluiced off the large leaves of the breadfruit and palms in the yard.  Green on green with splashes of vivid pink or orange met us as we waited for the  rain to stop.  It ended in ten minutes and then all was quiet except for drainpipes gurgling and leaves rustling in a very light breeze.

Bound for Limahuli Garden and Preserve two miles to the west of us, our exploration and swing into the wild blue was beginning.  The region is lush, green, dense with growth and feels like a tilted world decorated with flowers.  Mauka way (toward the mountains), there is a rambling skyline of overgrown lava peaks.  Makai way (to the ocean) the water is aqua blue and lined with curling white breakers.  In between is a riot of undergrowth that you might think only needs Tarzan to go swinging through it or velociraptors so that the prehistoric jungle can be complete.  But, it's quiet.  You hear wind or water on leaves and the restless surf.  Tarzan or velociraptors is not what the forest and jungle are talking about; they would be an imposition in this nearly silent place.

Kauai's north shore feels soft as it meets you, talks to you quietly about water, how it flows through and around rocks.  The undulations of land, rivers, forests and beaches muffle sound and baffle the wind.

We slowed our pace quite a lot today and took time to feel the change.  We drank less coffee, stopped more often to watch and listen and felt delight come over us, very slowly.  We were not bored out of our minds.  Instead, we have a longer list than before of places we want to see and spend time with.  We forgot what day it is today and have no inclination to watch television or take part in fear and violence.

I stood on the hushing shore at sunset once again this evening.  While the aqua swells lifted and fell on the golden sand, an image of white snow falling silently filled my mind.  Earlier this afternoon, I watched paddleboarders gliding across Hanalei Bay while glittering light played on the hammered gray metal water, and I thought of shooting stars.  All silence in all of nature was speaking its own language, talking story, peacefully.  Now the singing insects are keeping a trilling pulse-like rhythm in the night, the lullaby of the ages.