The Magic of Hawaii
Hawaii: the soft touch of plumeria petals, the wonder of strange new flora and fauna, the beauty of hidden landscapes, the sunlight sparkling off of crashing waves...
Hawaii: the sweet chill of morning, the oppressive heat of midday, the humid, changing sky of twilight, the frozen stars of night-time...
Hawaii: the distant, fiery power of Kilauea, the clear-skied magic of Mauna Kea, the peak of Haleakala brushed with the gold of a new day...
Hawaii: magic, pure and simple.
By far, my favorite part of the Hawaii trip was seeing all these new and wildly diverse landscapes. Every forest, every waterfall, every beach was different. In the morning, we’d see the neat hedges and almost familiar trees of HPA, with a rainbow’s vivid stripes stretched above. Then we’d drive by the rolling hills and fields of the island, covered in tawny grass just long enough for a gust of wind to transform it all into a vast sea of shimmering golden velvet. At Hapuna Beach, the glistening Pacific reaches to the very edge of the world. Tall, resplendent cliffs cloaked in vegetation rise from the sea at places like Waipio, Laupahoehoe, and Pololu. I especially love the look of the land just after sunset or just before sunrise--a bluish haze clings to the silhouetted landscape.
Hawaii is even more beautiful underwater; Lapakahi State Park was a particular favorite of mine. Huge schools of ever-present yellow tang mingle with pairs of butterflyfish as parrotfish chomp away at algae-encrusted rocks. Tiny, almost unseen bright-eye damselfish dart around coral of all shapes and sizes. There’s wana and ina and helmet urchins and collector urchins and red pencil urchins; there’s the skinny trumpetfish and knife-wielding surgeonfish and bearded goatfish and triggerfish with fins that rival any boat’s sails. Even the names of the fish are colorful (just as the humuhumunukunukuapua’a and the lauwiliwilinukunuku’oi’oi). The only way to find comparable diversity on land is to check the Puako tidepools.
The tidepool lab was definitely my favorite lab. The creatures we found were on par with those of a sci-fi movie: brittle stars, with their writhing, spiny tentacles; orange gumdrop sea slugs, looking like so many little globs of orange jello; banded coral shrimp, made by the same artist who designed barbershop poles, apparently; and the catch of the day, pom-pom crab sans anemones. This particular crab carried an orange-red egg sac under its abdomen (which would explain why our shirts all said "sea eggs" in Hawaiian). Some of the best stuff at the tidepools is under the rocks. You can find all sorts of little crabs, purse shells, sea squirts (if only nature had designed the Super Soaker, too), and translucent flatworms that glide effortlessly over the surface of the rock. I also discovered my favorite marine organisms--sea cucumbers. I love them because they're almost completely harmless to humans. All they can do is squirt water at you and then go limp. Apparently, if you leave them like that for too long, they actually start to disintegrate! In dire circumstances, they will also expel their own digestive systems to distract predators. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is dedication to survival.
While the science-class portion of the trip was great, the culture portion was at times even better. From the somber Mo'okini heiau to the colorful and exciting (if somewhat touristy) luau dances, I found the Hawaiian culture fascinating. Myths about the Nightmarchers, stories of Pele, and legends of the menehune will probably continue to fascinate me for the rest of my life. All I can say for sure is that if Shakespeare had been Hawaiian, Romeo and Juliet would have turned into flowers instead of stabbing themselves, and it would be all Pele's fault. That is the basic story behind the origins of the lehua flower, the ohia tree, and two varieties of naupaka. The glimpses we got of modern Hawaiian culture were interesting as well. From the inverted state flags flown by secessionist groups to grocery stores selling all flavors of spam, sushi-type concoctions made of spam, rice, and seaweed, and spam-flavored macadamia nuts, it's clear that modern Hawaiians are an...interesting group.
I previously mentioned my new-found love of the moments just before sunrise and just after sunset. This is completely because of this trip. It's hard not to like sunsets after you've seen them on Hapuna so many times, beheld the sun setting the sky ablaze just opposite the erupting Kilauea, and watched the sun set just before stargazing atop Mauna Kea (although the altitude sickness didn't exactly help that little excursion). And after watching the sun rise over the blanket of clouds surrounding Haleakala, and going on a hike at 5 AM to see a hidden waterfall at sunrise, it's hard not to like sunrises, either.
The latter excursion to the waterfall is a story in itself. The other waterfalls we saw on the trip were bigger and in a tropical setting (even the few we saw, literally, on the side of the road), but the trip to the first waterfall was definitely an adventure. We climbed uphill and downhill (mostly uphill, unfortunately), we hopped over, wriggled under, and got clothes stuck on barbed-wire fences, and we saw more than a few "NO TRESPASSING" signs. Sights like that prompt questions, such as Are we supposed to be here? and, more importantly, Are we going to get shot for walking here? Uncle Dennis put these fears to rest; no one really cared if we were here and the fences were just for cows. This raises a whole new set of questions, mostly variants of How many cow pies have I stepped on in the dark so far? The answer, thankfully, was none.
Overall, the trip was rewarding, and I'm glad I went. I sincerely hope I get to go back someday.
Hawaii: the salt air from the sea, the rotten-egg smell of sulfur from volcanoes, the sweet perfume of plumeria wafting along a soft breeze...
Hawaii: torches twisting in the Samoan fire dance, schools of fish swarming a shipwreck in the dim light a hundred feet down, the night sky lit with a single volcanic torch in the distance...
Hawaii: time-worn stones whispering ancient secrets, black-sand beaches still in their infancy, a chain of islands cycling through birth and death as eternally as any living creature...
Hawaii: magic, pure and simple.
