Fish Girl and Honu the Second

I've lived in Hawai'i for nearly four years now. Despite my love for the beach and my occasional snorkeling adventures, I've come across relatively few sea turtles (or honu as they are called in Hawaiian). In fact, up until two days ago I'd only seen one.


I feel an affinity with animals that seem to lack rippling gracefulness and seem to plod through life awkwardly. Knowing I'm not the only creature on this planet who is a little less than refined and sophisticated helps a little. In short, I adore sea turtles. When at the beach I secretly hope that one will come over with that look that says, 'yup, I understand how you feel, we are kindred spirits.' But instead, I bob up and down in the water in a sea of mounting melancholy, surrounded only by the ocean's glamorous denizens.


On my first encounter with a turtle I was reminded that they are just animals, not kindred spirits. For this one begged me to keep my distance. When I approached Honu the First he began to take an interest in me a flipped his way toward me. Cool, should have been my first thought. But the massive creature seemed peeved at the intrusion into his morning dance in the sunlight. As best I could I backed off to watch him from further away.


Another opportunity to find turtles to commune with presented itself when J. came to visit. He wanted to go to the beach where all the turtles go (apparently there is one and I've missed it). But we had just met and I wasn't letting him take me anywhere yet. So my next major chance to find these lovable swimming rock-like animals drifted away when I made an excuse to leave.


Finally, Honu the Second and I met two days ago. It took a trip to another island and just 20 minutes of snorkeling before I discerned his outline in the distance. He was floating back and forth in the surge - flippers outstretched, like he was enjoying the ride. At that moment I realized that sea turtles aren't as gawky as I imagined. Rocking in murky water Honu the Second appeared to dance with the rays of sunlight piercing through the water. Wanting to swim closer and play with him, I figured it was best to leave him be lest he take to chasing me as Honu the first did. So I floated there a while watching Honu enjoy life, wishing I enjoyed mine just a bit more.

Kafka and Geertz

I never thought that the sad neurotic author Franz Kafka and the well-traveled anthropologist Clifford Geertz had much in common, and perhaps they don't. Yet strange things happen when I take to reading their works out in public...

While picnicking with Kafka in a park in one of those far off places of my past, I attracted too much attention. No one would have mistaken me for underfed, yet I was offered food. My foreign appearance may have linked me with a love of Mcfood, but I really wasn't in the mood. Kafka had a much bigger draw. In turn three men old enough to be my grandfather approached me offering me food or money. At first the language barrier confused me, but body language could not obscure what they were really after. The first, the most gregarious of the three, offered to take me for food, give me money, and take me back to his place just across the park. Now one would think that having rejected the first the remaining onlookers would feel discouraged. But no. The second waited less than ten minutes to slide into the space vacated by the first and take up the dirty sign language. A firm repeated 'no' in several languages and an insistence that Kafka was all the man I needed finally scared him off. The third waited even less time to seize the opportunity to conquer me and Kafka. But he too kept his money and got nothing. Since he refused to accept my refusal, I had no choice but to collect my things and leave. Later I learned from a coworker that the picturesque park I had chosen for my afternoon picnic was also frequented by prostitutes. They must have figured I was one of them. For some inexplicable reason I blame Kafka.

Geertz is another matter. And another story. Maybe the comparison isn't quite fair. But I can't help seeing similarities. But let's not retell that story now...

Suspicious spam

Shortly after nine my normal morning routine came to a halt in front of the computer screen. Like every other day I clicked my way through my daily dose of friendly e-mails and sighed as I confronted my spam box. Sometimes e-mails intended for me wind up in the long list of unsolicited offers of Viagra, debt consolidation, e-dating services and products to lengthen, enlarge or reduce the size of various body parts. At seven messages, today’s list was pleasantly short. I scanned down the names of senders when one near the bottom slapped me with memories. My stomach took a dive for my toes which curled like claws into the carpet. The dot com of the address and I glared at each other for a painfully prolonged second. Repeatedly my eyes traced each letter of the name before a spark of reason shook my head clear. Certainly this unexpected and unwelcome message in my spam box was just a strange and unhappy coincidence. By now that blue-eyed apparition from the past must have lost all interest in corresponding with this over-flung fling. However, the “what if” worm kept wiggling and boring into my brain, painting absurdities with the perfection of Salvador Dali until I had no choice but to open the dreadful message.

I held my breath while my stomach performed another flip-flop. My hand trembled on the mouse as I clicked on the message. A voice in my head scolded my cowardice, my sense of self-importance, and my silliness at even caring whether that obscure name could be so prolific. When it came up I checked to see how many others had received the message, but my name stood alone in the recipient row.

Our two cryptic names in such close proximity seemed odd together, just like the two of us back when a well-intentioned person invited us as a “couple” on a day trip. We floated through it like oil and vinegar salad dressing, side by side, mixable, but distant. Pressed close in the back seat of a small car we drove for several hours, touching without intent or interest, seeing each other only peripherally, and speaking solely to those hosting our misery fest. The message revived the feeling of being near him and yet invisible. A thought crystallized in my psyche; he had painted my portrait as would a blind man who had never experienced me with any of his remaining senses. Hostility toward the wasted canvas inappropriately carrying my name lead me to fume.

Another deep breath allowed me to scroll down to the message from the potential past acquaintance. It consisted of a single line made up of 4 words and a question mark, but my eyes couldn’t focus on them immediately. “Is this from you?” it asked followed by a zipped attachment. Was it disappointment or relief that fed my paranoia? Under normal circumstances I would rapidly delete such an e-mail with a huff or a silent curse, but here was that ridiculous name stirring up questions, muddying my mind. Realizing that the name would hypnotize me as long as it continued charging up my optic nerves, I logged out and stared at the innocuous screen.

A few minutes later, I checked in again like the child whose curiosity overrides his fear so he reopens the closet door to see if the monster is still there. And he was. And I couldn’t delete him. But never fear, in thirty days my e-mail provider will do that for me.

~2004

Quest for the golden deity

originally written: March 16, 2000

(Taiwan)

That far off city, now enveloped in a fog of memory, no longer real, no longer tangible, only offered me one great adventure. My purpose there it would seem was simple, absurdly so. One day, not long after settling in, it greeted me under the afternoon sun. It, a golden statue high up on a hill surrounded by leafy trees, called out to me – I’m waiting for you. The early summer sun radiated enough heat to suppress the shiver that wanted to creep down my spine. There was no one I could go to, with whom I could have discussed the strange attraction I felt towards this golden monstrosity on the hillside.

At first, I tried to ignore it--it was just another statue after all, just another statue. But then I would see it gleaming in that afternoon sun and my curiosity would awaken. Every time my gaze landed on it I felt the call—I’m waiting for you. After a few days I began wondering about how long it would take to reach the deity, if I could get anywhere near it. I told myself that one weekend, one day, maybe a Saturday, I would set out before it got too hot and make a day trip out of it. That all planned out, I sat on it. Yeah, yeah, one day I’ll get up to that golden statue, but the days went by. Finally, one day when some forgotten depression was drowning me, I got up without thinking, only hoping to get lost while running away so that I could not turn coward and find my way home. I decided in an instant to head up the hill and find the golden deity, not because he offered me any answers or any peace, but because I thought that there was something to be gained in the search.

There is something quite fascinating to me about finding one’s way by feel. I tend to annoy traveling companions with my aversion to asking for directions. The search, the journey is (for me anyway) usually more rewarding than the destination. It is when we get lost that we are found again, when we stumble down the wrong path that we discover the peace of knowing the way. It is way of learning to appreciate our stability. So when I arrived at the statue’s feet only twenty minutes after setting out without even encountering a single wrong turn, I could not help feeling disappointed.

Looming on the roof of a monastery, the statue appeared quite eerie up close. The usual glow that it emanated from afar was gone. In its place, was a green-hued shine that did little to comfort me. I stared at the figure remembering that it symbolized something to the natives that I would never really understand, and maybe that I did not really want to understand. “He’s just another inanimate god,” I thought to myself before turning my back on him. I did not go home right away, I was still looking to lose myself somewhere, so I walked up the next hill to the cemetery. Yes the cemetery is up on the hill while the living live together squashed into the unenlightened valley. While passing by—I did not have the nerve to enter it— I saw large clouds of smoke rising from the desolate looking place. It formed quite a picture in my mind, the grass withered, brown, the tombs like miniature mansions with windows and doors, the sky almost a Greek blue and then this thick, dark, sooty cloud strong with the scent of living flames. Soon the fire engine came crying up the hill, rushing into the cemetery and down over the crest to where the fire must have been.

I continued along the road hoping to find something more welcoming, but there was just the one road optionless, leading down into another valley. It left nothing to decide, but I wanted that freedom, that power. Since it offered me no choices and only dictated the future, I turned back taking an unfamiliar route home.

Mortals and Mount Olympus

(This is another take on the last post)

I'd like to dance a jig on a mountain ridge and scale a wall of mud without the fear of falling to a premature death. Or stand rooted in the wind and stretch out my arms and let my clothes flap like drying laundry, and not dream of the gust that topples me. No, there should be no dreams of tripping or falling, at least until I've sprouted wings. Nor should any real falling occur. I'll shimmy down those rocks with my inelegant style, sigh 'oh my,' and mentally rehearse each carefully timed series of bounding steps to the next point of safety, but there's no need for death just yet. I'd like to reach that mountaintop someday uninjured (and even splinters are included in that prohibition).

Before you hold my sex against me, I'll have you know that my girliness is not so extreme as for me to bemoan the dirt that rushed up under my recently painted nails, or the mud caking on my lower body. I didn't even curse at the occasional mosquito that got a little fresh with me. But 40 ft of mud and tree roots had me wondering just which part of my body was the doing the hiking and lamenting our lack of universal health coverage. I wouldn't mind a mild battle wound, but only if I could afford to have it repaired to 'like new' condition and it saved me from the prelims.

The hike ended undramatically with a 'I'm not climbing down that, I'm not sure I could get back up' at a spot that was comparatively unimpressive. My fear of heights finally got the better of me. Yet, had we continued we would have been late returning home. So we slowly headed back taking in the view and scanning the bordering foliage for tart strawberry guavas. The mud had me momentarily reflecting on becoming the hermit of the ridgeline. That would take care of the prelims and a few other nagging inconveniences of modern life. The wind made me reconsider. A rather large L-shaped log embedded in the muck received my salacious greetings and promises of affection with a stern rigidity. Then came the bit with the rope, but it wasn't quite enough to get a good bounce out of. Perhaps mountains need more rope. Our baby roller coaster chugged back to the big rock face and up, up, up we went. I am happy to report that I almost fell off only once. Only once and only almost.

That night as my pectorals did more of the aching than my calves or hamstrings, I dreamt of our almost adventure to Mt. Olympus. At every possible moment I slipped, I tripped, I fell, and I slid right off the ridge, only to find myself further along, but meeting the same disastrous end. Not even in my dreams did this mortal make it to Mt. Olympus. One of those spills was my last. At least this time I awoke to tell the tale.

Wa'ahila Ridge: Where fear, stupidity, and bravery meet

It was to be our last hike of the summer, so we had to pick something good. Something different. Something challenging that proved to be better than any of our other hikes. After all, it was to be our last. Several trails made it onto the short list, but who can resist the temptation of trying to climb Mt. Olympus? Of course there is no official trail that trudges on up to the peak, but it is certainly not an untraveled route.

The official trail is the Wa'ahila ridge trail. We started it from the park's parking lot at the top of St. Louis Heights. The trail started up slow on a wide path lined with well-combed strawberry guava bushes. The continuous upward climb triggered the burning question, would it only continue up?

Soon the answer came to us as the trail bounded down a rocky face. We skipped down the boulder face with only a few references to mountain goats. The rest of the trail rollercoastered up and down narrow at times, with great views of the surrouding valleys. For days to come I would dream about running that trail, tripping and rolling at full velocity down to my death at the bottom of the valley. Luckily, our adventure had no such traumatic end.

Strawberry guava freak that I am, I was happy to find the trail well-lined with this tangy fruit and not completely over-picked. So we snacked a bit along the way.

About half way toward the official end we reached a nice little spot ideal for camping out on the windy ridge and also a great place for taking a few pictures to prove that we did in fact climb that far. But it was still a fair distance from our goal, which we would never reach.

Of course, we did try to get there. We stopped at the official end drank some water, read the official sign, and continued on. For the first few minutes we scoffed at the warning and stumbled on down the trail, until we reached the wall of mud.

I call it the wall of mud because what there was of a trail wound up and over a myriad of exposed tree roots. We slipped our way up 40 feet or more of squishing, smacking mud in pools among them and did our best not to lose our balance. While climbing up, I somehow thought it would be easier going down, but learned better later. We continued on for a bit, still far from Mt. Olympus, hoping to make it once agin to the crest of the Ko'olau.

Twenty minutes later we were still far from our goal, having traveled up and down and up and down again. It seemed we had covered no distance at all expending all of our energy on changing elevation over and over. In the end we reach a bit where I was convince I would not be able to climb back up again. so we stopped took a picture and returned back. There was more slipping and sliding down the mud wall and more strawberry guavas plucked from along the trail. And it ended back in the parking lot with little time to spare on our time deadline. So, in the end, it was better to have turned around when we did than to press on to Mt. Olympus.

To the Crest of the Ko‘olau

My favorite hike so far...

We started in the grey-green Kuli‘ou‘ou Valley parking at a dead-end road. After a moment of indecision at the trailhead, deliberating between the easy trail to the dried up waterfall and the more challenging trail to the Ko‘olau crest, we headed up. The bottom portion of the trail zig-zagged up the side of the middle ridge, setting my insufficiently trained calves on fire.

A wider variety of flowers lined the path than I was used to from the Makiki Valley trails. Splashes of purple, pink, orange, and yellow brightened the overcast morning. Huffing and puffing we scrambled over a few rocky bumps, and side stepped the occasional protruding root structure. H complained that the trail was too dry, we needed more mud to paint racing stripes down our sides (as he had done a few weeks ago). Even though no oozing, smacking muck covered the way, we setting on continuing.

For about an hour we dizzied ourselves with shuffling back and forth up the path. Near the end of the switchbacks pine trees began to line the way, and discarded pine needles to carpet the trail. When we reached the ridgeline the temperature dropped from pleasantly warm to potentially chilly. A wind from the east whistled in the pines. I expected a thin ridgeline with death-inducing falls from either side, but what I encountered was a wide swath of land heavily dotted with grey-trunked pines sporting greyish-green needles. The overcast morning completed the effect of walking through a moody Impressionist’s dream.

As I resigned myself to the ridge slinking along hidden by towering giants we came to the “halfway point,” a set of covered picnic tables. The trail would proceed upward along the narrowing ridge, gaining an additional 900+ feet in elevation. So we rested at the picnic tables and discussed the process of crossing fruit species and flowers. Blame it on the nectarines.

The trail then began to head up more quickly. We changed tree varieties. The tall, skinny greyish-green drooping needle pines meet at a front with a exuberant green, flamboyant Christmas tree-like evergreen. We scrambled up root structures, no longer bemoaning the lack of mud. The forest became thicker and darker.

Soon we cleared the pines and climbed out onto a finer section of the ridge. The large trees stayed behind, affording us spectacular views of the Kuli‘ou‘ou Valley and Hawai‘i Kai area. Blue sky hung in the distance, a grey cloud hovered above us, and mist raced over the emerald ridge on the other side of the valley.

Green and red ferns lined the trail, as did a few barren twisted trees. The trail climbed up, flattened out and climbed again. My heart pounded in my chest and I gave no thought to how exactly I would have to scramble back down. Despite the elevation the breeze was stifled at times, the mist in the air rising from the valley pressed in on us like the heat of a sauna. But then the oppressiveness would lift, and the breeze would ripple over us, only to race away again.

We finally reached the triangular patch of dirt with a sign marking the end of the trail two feet from falling off the edge. The panoramic view stretched from Kaneohe in the misty distance to the turquoise waters off of the white sands of Bellows and Waimanalo. The farm land around Wamanalo crept up to the base of the mountains, or at least as far as I was willing to peer over the edge.

Rabbit Island peaked out from behind the edge of the rippling mountain range. Another bump in the ridge prevented us from following the beach down the coast.




A turn brought Koko Head Crater into view, now shrunken below us. The sandy beach of Hanauma Bay and its light blue waters were hidden from view, it appeared a mere notch in the coastline. Hawaii Kai sprawled out between us and Koko Head.


Another turn and the valley flowed down from below us, dotted with houses, emptying into a deep blue abyss. Diamond Head Crater poked up from behind the other ridge of the valley. The valley itself was lush with greenery rising to summit behind the cloud lingering over us. One more turn and the sign came back into view.

The trek back down involved a bit of slipping, a lot of picture taking, and occasionally climbing down backwards. At one point back under the cover of the pines there was an attempt by one member of our hiking party to make a snow angel in the pine needle carpet. However, it became apparent that snow is a major requirement for the successful creation of the angelic figures. A warm unrelenting sun accompanied us down the remainder of the path making me glad we'd had shade on the way up.