We Take Ourselves With Us

Despite threats of flash flooding and torrential rains, we set off yesterday for the Eastern side of Hawaii. (Um, we lived in Florida for several decades & now live in upstate New York--give us vinyl ponchos a hoodies, a bottle of water and some Macadamia Crunch popcorn and we're ready for anything Mother Nature's got!). We made the right call. We drove back through the rolling, tufted terrain of Hawaii's ranches. The vast openness let us see both the bright blue peaking through the sky and the dense, angry clouds building around Mauna Kea. And the whipping wind seemed a permanent fixture: all the trees were bent away from it with little foliage on the side pummeled by the winds that must flow down from the mountains daily. Oddly, alongside these scrubby trees we also saw cactus! Then, after Waimea, everything changed. The vegetation became lush, overwhelming, sometimes rising 30 feet on either side of the road. We were nearing the Waipio Valley--a beautiful gre...

Today we set off North for the beaches of the Kohala coast. The drive up is through hardened lava fields that are sometimes chunky rocks and other times swooping, swirling sculptures that reveal the path of the lava so long ago. Apparently it's a thing to commemorate a lost (or non-lost) loved one by spelling out his or her name in white stones on top of the black lava stone. So, we passed our trip reading these tributes. Our first stop was Hapuna Beach, a long strip of white sand surrounded by crystal clear water in darkening bands of turquoise. On the horizon, we could see whales breeching and raising their tail fins high in the air. The kids rushed the waves for a good two hours, and Penn and I built sand castles. After lunch, we decided to try Spencer Beach, which is surrounded by a low reek near the shore that means few waves and great snorkeling. This is a real family beach, where parents doze in the sun while their kids play in the surf; it's surrounded by big ...