Hawaii Day Ten

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From sea to air: my helicopter ride!
As if to see Kauai from every side,
We'd booked this tour back home. Now it was come,
I wasn't sure another motor's hum
Transporting other windows with my face
Would get me any closer to this place
On this my last day here. Was scenery
Indeed the only path to poetry?
Was this what I expected when I flew,
Muse to my breast, across the bounding blue
To find myself upon these islands? Art,
It seems, should something more to do with heart.
My blog has missed the mark; something was lost;
I'm decoyed down a glamour overglossed:
Another couplet for a mountain green --
Another paean to an ocean scene --
Another guided tour -- what would it mean?
There should be something deeper...some way in,
Some spirit from the places we have been
Attaching a connection at the soul
Instead of to the endless camera roll.
Alas, I sing vacations -- don't I, Muse?
Given us much, much less to us refuse;
We step on commerce's conveyor belt
Where only the exchange of cash is felt,
Are funneled through a gulped economy
Whose moment's morsel the reality
That keeps the airplanes flying, spigots on,
The mountains green, the green upon the lawn,
The dreams upon the posters on the wall
That fringe the mental verge from which we fall,
Chasing a shadow, kicking once the wheel
To turn the great machine of how we feel,
And what we know, and do, here in our time --
And O, across the age Cook strikes the rhyme:
"Pacific Ocean." Sure. Give us a beach,
My friend, and shadows of the clubs' upreach
Behind our living backs. I almost wish.
The last vacation day serves a cold dish.

Sara was sick. I mean, some years ago,
From helicopters, and she wouldn't go.
So once again, I took the car alone
This early morning, while the bright sun shone,
Unsettled too at separateness again,
This anniversary as yet -- but then,
Ahead of me there lurked a fascination
Older than Hawaii or vacation:
Helicopters. Always I had dreamed --
From childhood or younger, so it seemed --
Of taking to the air in such a ship
(Of flying it myself!)...The chances slip
Like years through fingers, still I never had,
The dream discarded as a youthful fad,
Test too expensive for a thing untrue.
But give vacation finances their due:
Thrown in with the Hawaiian avalanche,
The chopper ride expenses had a chance.
Add nervousness, then, to my troubled state,
Exhuming finally a half-buried fate:
What for Kauai no longer had a need
Was deeper opening a dormant seed,
The fond chimera of the youthful fad
Now bodied at the airport helipad,
An insect black and bubbled in the sun,
Doors open for me! Not quite having fun,
I join five others where we group and sit
And fumble through the life preserver kit
In roaring backwash at the verge of field.
And then into the bubble we are sealed.
The weird machine, close-quartered, noisy, steel,
When fastened shut on me comes sudden real,
And I, who seasick laughed at yesterday,
Happy and prancing in the open spray,
Feels stomach quiver in this leather seat
Close to my neighbor's breath in glassy heat.
The headphones wrap me, tinny volume high,
And then, with bare a nudge, we start to fly.

Forget all questions! This -- is where it's at!
Like magic we detach the grassy flat
And pop into the sky a weightless inch,
Rove backward, turning, agile as a finch
That flicks its wings across the summer lawn,
Tilt once, and from the pull of Earth are gone.
Sickness forgotten: almost with a blow
My spirit claims my body, keen to go!
I tell you what -- all grandeurs of Kauai
That for the hour passed our windows by
Are second to that swift and silent pass
Twenty feet backward, one inch from the grass.
You had me there! My childhood dreams of flying,
Stepping to the air by simply trying,
Áll were real, were just like this. I'm right --
The helicopter's formed for my delight.
The airport drops away as if we shrug
Ourselves above the brown and emerald rug,
Select a height and lounge there, looking round,
Then aim up at a mountain, take a bound,
And clear the beetling ridge with just a breeze
Between our bubble and the tips of trees,
Go floating down the ridgeline o'er a trail
As if just kicked the soil here to sail,
Drift sideways o'er the plunging valley green,
Then plunge ourselves, pursuing what we've seen,
A shining glint, a hidden waterfall;
We hover there, then skirt the mighty wall
Of some sheer cliff extending high above,
A window-washer free to swing and move
Or toss the job entire, head to sea,
Wish-drifting to whatever sights agree.
The landscapes of Kauai, all crinkled up
In sunlit verdant hump and shadowed cup,
Were lovely but of secondary thrill
To this our fairy navigating skill.
Flitting we touched on all the herald host,
Waimea, Kalalau, Napali Coast,
But better liked than they, I must confess,
Were the lost tracts of roadless wilderness
That spread their virgin mysteries below
In swards and swales of greenery, aglow
As if illumined from a light beneath.
From sharkback flanges of the mountain teeth
To little waterfalls' sequestered pools
Inset in velvet like translucent jewels,
The land was empty, waiting, like a set
Of everything we seek, or must forget.
The pilot's voice, deadpan, close in our ear,
Names all the features as we sally near;
At times I slide the earphones from my head,
Preferring helicopter noise instead,
The lovely whining roar of magic flight
That best accompanies this sort of sight.
And soon our island circle is complete;
Lihue and the airport scenes repeat,
Rising so gently toward us, like we trod
An aery stairway curving to the sod,
And finally took the last step to the grass
As if relenting once again to mass.
O thank you, helicopter pilot John,
Reviving dreams to base new dreams upon
(Of flying it myself!); with body buoyant,
Almost with a spirit clairovoyant,
Hálf as if I'd bounce again to sky,
I skipped the red-dirt soil of Kauai
Back to the car, and the vacation day,
With half an eye somewhere further away.






Sara had spent the morning at the beach,
Speed-sketching all attractions within reach
Of her fast-flying pencil and black book
(Alternative that often drew a look
Of wistful admiration from the hordes
In busy service to their camera lords
When, at some railing, gulping vistas raw,
They'd see her whet her older tools and draw).
Her journey's art she also meant to post
By daily blog, and likewise now was lost,
Marooned by vanished Internet with mine
In shared aesthetic of a private line.

Reunioned now (still aery in my feet),
We stopped again at Puka Dog to eat
(Hi Amy!), then returned to Poipu strand
For one last snorkel o'er the golden sand.
The sea was stronger, and with boiling roar
The coiling surf embarriered the shore;
We walked a sandbar out into the bay
That served to swing the flanking swells its way;
The crests clapped on the bar, as, ankle-deep,
The turquiose water made an upward leap
Chest-high and higher, trapping in pure glee
A girl who posed, applauded by the sea.
But notwithstanding all this blow and spray,
The swimmers frolicked in their sunny play,
And so we donned our snorkels and went in.
But soon we found, to Sara's great chagrin,
As outward through the surge we tried to ford,
That buoyancy becomes a doubled sword:
Salt-water lifted, tumbled all about,
Hard to get in, and harder to get out,
She lay, rolled and defeated, in the wash
That o'er the quicksand surged its fizzing slosh.
The meanwhile, underwater, all was blurred
In clouds of dark and swirling sand upstirred.
And so, kissing and giggling with love,
We beat retreated to our favored cove
In shelter of the reef. Here we could swim
And see, tucked close against their rocky rim,
The brilliant fish. A while we swam together,
Buffeted by underwater weather,
Pointing in our silence to a flash
Of luminescent flagships' sudden dash,
To follow in a hasty kicking tour
Between the sunken rocks and sandy floor;
Encountering a better, branching off,
And finally, standing with a sniff and cough
To clear the mask, and finding with a start
She and myself a hundred yards apart.

Three turtles, feeding almost at the shore,
Oblivious to all gathered to adore --
Some standing in the shallows, eyes in air,
Some mask-down, under-element to share
(Myself afloat, but helpless to the thrust
Back and then at them, threatening our trust) --
Became the final sigil of the beach.
Ocean and air: with equal home in each,
To swim, to bask, in patient liesure ply
The intermixing layers of Kauai,
The sacred turtles measure out the me,
And from our shared littoral family
Dispatch us home with silent knowing smile,
Acolytes of the mystic giving Isle.

And now, the final evening of our trip:
Back at the Hyatt, well-dressed, hip to hip,
We stroll the pathways to our waiting table
Ín a restaurant like a children's fable:
"Tidepools" -- built out over a lagoon
Reflecting tiki torch and waxing moon;
Thatched roof and bamboo, open at the sides,
Cool flagstone floor with privacy divides,
Our table nestled at the very brink
Where koi fish watch us as we click our drink,
Or throw a frothing fit abreast our feet
When we drop sourdough gobs for them to eat.



Romantic setting for our capping night!
The more as we grow tasty-toasting tight;
Adventure not of vistas, art, or food
But of a satisfied relaxing mood.
Aye, Camb, I see you circling in the dark
Above the strike of our romantic spark --
Hawaii! And we're married twenty years,
And to a twenty more we clink our cheers --
Again the moment lifts from the vacation,
Weathervane of wider celebration,
Póem not a part of, so you fly
And pierce the private brightness cannot try.
Something still higher, there you winged wait,
But strata here of Sara's and my fate;
Tomorrow I'll rejoin you, but for now
Me and my sweetie share a strengthened vow,
Let history and commerce serve us this,
And share a well-fed, sunburned Island kiss.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Nine (Part II)

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The drive back down and East, quick turn-around,
And, reunited, again Westward bound,
The one Kauaiian road learning our car.
This time we didn't echo quite as far,
Just to Waimea's "Shrimp Station" for lunch
(Shrimp tacos dripping juice with joyous munch
Upon the picnic tables by the street,
Where quiet Waimea held a red-dust heat),
Then East again, same road, back to the port:
Turn right, at once the island comes up short
And meets the Ocean's liberating blue.
We gathered with the others of our crew.

To sea! The catamaran leaps the meter
Ás it skiis the rollers sent to greet her:
Barefoot, all our footwear stacked on shore,
The inboard engines throbbing through the floor,
Some dozen of us tourists breast the bounce,
Torn by the wind and staggered by the jounce,
Of speeding freedom into the terrific
Open prairie of the blue Pacific!
"Lucky Lady" -- so we call our craft --
Is forty feet or so from fore to aft:
A central cabin rumbling low and dry
With beverage service (yes, and free Mai Tai),
An open cockpit stern with sunken thwarts,
Twin narrow bows that pound to the reports
Of shattered waves gulfing back sheets of spray --
Now port, now starboard -- soaking the gangway
That runs wide matching aisles down the sides --
The spot of choice for all who love such rides.
Offshore we have a clear blue sunlit day;
The cloudhead and the island fall away,
Presenting mountain profiles to our view,
Exchanging and receding. We pursue
A steady course a mile off the beach,
Just close enough to see, almost in reach,
Towns, houses, roads, familiars of the land,
People and turtles lounging on the strand,
While still suggesting, in the smoky rise
Of distant mountain mysteries to my eyes,
The virgin apparition Cook had seen
When first he raised its great and dreadful green.

This voyage is for play: we sip our drinks,
We throttle down for bottlenose hi-jinks,
We hail a paddle-boarder with his daughter
(Wildlife upon the azure water),
Happily we speed through spray and light...
While gradually the shoreline grows in height.
Subtle like shadows comes the chilling change,
And suddenly we're in a mountain range:
Napali Coast! Goal of the dinner cruise,
A brutal flex of bare and rugged thews,
The greenery and beaches of the Isle
Forgotten for a fell and fortress style
Composed of pitted, raw and rearing rocks,
Sheer from the sea in massive rusted blocks
That claw the sky with razor-taloned towers,
Flying buttresses of godless powers.
Nichelike arid valleys squeeze between,
By instant's passing angle only seen,
Crevasses of unfathomable bone
Holding the shadowed secrecy of stone
Where hermits could hide blissful, or the spears
Of tribal ambush fasten in your fears.



This quarter of Kauai's unreached by road,
No humans here to join its dry erode
Save those who boat around or come on foot
To blink and shudder at the mountains' root.
Here empty surf meets blinded rock in booms
That carve out unexpected little rooms --
A tiny shrine of beach and watered bush
Locked in beneath the towers' stony crush,
Or sea caves, giant mouseholes in the cliff
That arch immense and ragged o'er our skiff
As we poke closely in on shattered fizz.
They call this "scenic"; I suppose it is,
And so obligingly we smile and stare
And aim our cameras upwards into air,
Belittling the mountains to a frame
On which we can impose a human name.
And if the bald immensity of shapes
Insinuates a terror to our gapes,
Quick as we can, we come to Kalalau
(I'm back, though looking from the bottom now):
The greatest valley, and a bowl of green
That makes a reassuring tourist scene.

We pause for dinner here. In evening light,
Warm, gently bobbing in the breezes slight,
They serve a two-course heated meal afloat,
And homey smells of chicken fill the boat.
Like astronauts importing our abundance,
Hére we can relax in our redundance,
Grín at desolation like a park,
And toast the view with Mai Tais -- what a lark!
As if by premonition, I eat small,
And don't accept the offered alcohol.
And sure enough, soon as we turn for home
The rollers start to blow a little foam,
And as the evening strips away to black
The Ocean mounts a furious attack.
Wind at our head, swells hurtled at our bow,
Through cold and soaking sprays our engines plow,
While ever grows the underlying scale
Of climbs and plunges, servants to the gale:
Up, rising in a corkscrew to the sill
Of an immense onrushing liquid hill,
Then toppled to the dark and gulfing trough,
With pounding impact like to shake us off,
And up again, no slackening of speed,
We and the rollers endless in our need,
While far off, drunken on our starboard beam,
Tilts back and forth the last pink sunset gleam.
I'm raised on boats, and, like the light-foot crew,
I thrilled to the adventure through and through,
Knowing the storm not serious, took fun
In every upward shoot and downward stun;
I even clambered forward to the nose,
Tip of our starboard bow, to take the blows
Full force, cold hands clamped hard upon the railing,
Lifted from my feet with each impaling
Thrust we made into the coming wall!
But Sara didn't feel that way at all.
I joined her in the general tourist huddle
Sternwards, crowded in a cockpit muddle;
Stíff she sat with inward focused eye,
Giving her dinner's balance every try,
And not alone was she. A silence reigned
Among the well-fed fellows, and a pained
Contemplative intensity, while roared
The engines and the wind, and throbbed the board,
The fiberglass rebounding to each bash,
That threw our clinging clothes another dash.
A gentle Japanese man took first prize,
And just in time my sweetie closed her eyes,
Seeing him grope a bucket from the pile
And bring it quick to his inverted smile.
The contemplation deepened all around,
As new importance framed that plastic mound
Of small white buckets shown to us before;
The crew, alert and lively on the floor,
Swapped buckets for him and employed a hose
To clean it overboard, and back it goes
Upon the pile (awfully, on top),
And now the cascade starts and cannot stop.
Two, three, another, bending glumly double,
Every failure stirring further trouble;
"Kéep your eyes closed," I to Sara hiss,
But she is further isolate than this,
Deep in a meditation. I don't know
How far afield her spirit had to go,
But while I held her in my warming arm
She cast upon herself a fearsome charm
And stabilized her system through the sport
Of spouting passengers 'til we reached port.
Three cheers for this the triumph of her will!
Wan from her trial, happy with her skill,
We claimed our shoes upon the fastened Earth
And wandered inland from the dreadful berth.

Back to our car, and back home to our bed
Our day of double voyages was led,
Combining at the end to shared delight
In dryness, warmth, solidity, and night.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Nine (Part 1)

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My hiking day at last! Read, hiking morning,
All the project hastened by the warning
Deadline of returning for our cruise
By one o'clock. So, not an hour to lose:
At dawn I took the rental car alone --
The first vacation outing on my own --
And sunrise found me speeding to the West,
Then up the canyon country toward the crest
Of Kauai's inland highlands, and the trails
That hovered in my mind like holy grails.
A hard-core hiker? No. How then explain
The din of this agenda in my brain,
Predating e'en the trip, when I would look
With hungry romance through my travel book,
Or online sites, for hiking on Kauai?
Mute feelings but suggest the reasons why --
A need to meet the island face-to-face,
Reunion with a lost and promised place,
A sense that only inward, off the road,
Would presence on the island be bestowed...

Now flies the Hyundai in long upward swerves
On empty morning two-lane Alpine curves
Through drying woods. Relaxed behind the wheel,
With narrowed eyes I take the road by feel,
Aware of canyon vistas to the side
But focused on the smooth ascending ride,
The higher goal, the trailhead and the clock,
And it's with something of a scenic shock
When what I thought was canyon doubles down
And opens up that monster of renown:
Waimea! Here I have to stop and stare.
The lookout platform seems to float in air
In dessicated silence, while below
The ramparts of a giants' city grow
In ruined slabs and pillars from the pit,
Massive red castles crumbling into it
Down haze-dim miles, a deep and ancient throne
Of cataclysmic power gone to stone.



A quick gaze only, then I'm on my way,
At war against the fast-advancing day.
The road is long; already I'm behind;
I drive and drive but still I cannot find
The sign that marks my trailhead. In my eyes
Already mine is half a compromise;
The best and famous canyon trails set by
As taking too much time to fully try,
I've picked the Waipoo Falls trail, short and near,
But hours and curves run on, and soon, I fear,
I won't have time to hike even Waipoo.
At last the trailhead lurches into view,
And finally I can park my car. Now to it!
But, alas, as I'm about to do it,
Starting in along a wide dirt road,
My water-heavy pack a happy load,
I double-check just what the guidebook said.
This isn't yet the Waipoo Falls trailhead:
The head is found a mile further in
Down the dirt road. Reluctant to begin
By hiking dull preliminary woods,
I walk back to the car to chase the goods.
And now I nose the glossy Hyundai down
A steep and rutted funnel of dun-brown,
Moguled and potholed "road," choosing to scorn
The wooden sign whose chiseled letters warn,
"4-wheel drive only, slippery when wet." Why,
This road is clearly firm enough, and dry!
I'll just go to the trailhead, then I'll stop.
However, now the road begins to drop
At an alarming pitch, and lurching round
The pits and boulders, oft with scraping sound,
I start to ponder getting up again,
Especially if, God forbid, the rain
Comes on while I'm off hiking. Which it could!
The sky looks whitish through the masking wood.
Ah, finally here's a trailhead: not Waipoo,
The "Black Pipe Trail"; well, it will have to do.
Mercy of mercies, here's some level grass
Where I can park so others cars can pass
And, more importantly, turn mine about,
A first requirement of getting out.

I left the silver Hyundai at its ease,
Incongruous among the hanging trees,
And finally hit a trail! Nervous and tight,
Through falling forests jailing out the light,
I marched into the heartland of Kauai,
Not knowing where I was, or really why.
The woods were thick and pretty, but the slope
Increasing made my fast and hearty lope
Aware that hours would double coming back.
With one eye on my watch, hefting my pack,
I angled downward, weighing time and skill --
Then met a hiker coming back uphill.
An elder woodsman, native, fast of tread;
I stopped and asked him what I'd find ahead.
He rambled out a tortured roving tale
Of climbs and clambers o'er long miles of trail,
But said just down this hill I'd find a creek
With ancient waterworks I ought to seek.
We parted, and the echoed plashing sound
Guided me through the trunks to lower ground,
Where, sure enough, a sweet and shallow stream
Pooled in an open glade and warm sunbeam.
And here, lost in the forest, miles from Man,
An old cement canal still curving ran,
Guiding its flume through long-forgotten locks
Half-overgrown beneath tall birch and rocks.
The stream and pool in purling freedom spilled
Beside the system man had thought to build:
Two different waterways, the one to shun
This quiet clearing basking in the sun,
With warm white boulders by the shallow bank,
Green woods with only rain and light to thank,
And shunt its captive cargo through the shade
Entrenched in purposes that Man had made.
An artifact of bygone irrigation
Built to serve King Sugar's vast plantation,
Now an industry that's left Kauai,
But still the old machine drains highlands dry,
Almost a part of nature, mystery
Of wilderness and human history
Entwined and shared. The secrets of the Isle,
Presented as I picnicked, made me smile
And feel an understanding oddly earned.
I sat there for a while, then returned.



My little hike (though sweaty up the climb)
Had left me unexpected extra time,
So, having bounced the Hyundai back to road --
Successfully: no dings (at least, that showed) --
I turned my silver prow on upward to the top,
With freedom now to savor every stop.
This proved just one: the best, all books allow,
The lookout from the cliffs of Kalalau!
The road ends here; we've met the farther coast,
But at the highest ridge the Isle can boast,
The summit of the walls of Napali.
From here the land goes plunging to the sea,
Which, viewed again from this triumphant height,
Extends blue brilliance dazzling in the light
Forever to the edges of the world.
Between, like ripples in a flag unfurled
Before the ocean wind, the pleated cliff
Cuts out a sheer and ragged wall, as if
Kauai was one immense pistachio cake
And God a single piece had deigned to take.
The great green valley echoed with the snarl
Of helicopters' tiny flitting quarrel
Mosquitolike within, while the big breeze
Off clean Pacific spaces stirred the trees
Below the lookout lawn. In awe we gazed,
Tourists to kings by mountain vistas raised,
And clicked our little cameras, sadly knowing
Wé were more than what they would be showing
Later in the valleys of our lives.
Only with you, Muse, something here survives.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Eight

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"All years ago." For me it's up to weeks,
A mist before the vision as it seeks
To paint the image of the living day
As if we still were living it that way.
Ah, Camb! My daily blogging plan once broken,
Days rush in between the moments spoken.
Fínd me, long returned, now back at home,
Almost forgetting how it felt to roam,
The recrudescent habits closing in,
Pressing the days of our adventure thin
Like photos, closed in covers on the shelf,
That backwards speed an ever-former self.
New car, a week of flu...the rogue events
Come jostling for space and precedence
And suddenly a month has stunned my blog
And I'm left squinting through this veil of fog,
Not just to solve myself upon Kauai,
But catch from clouded flight your friendly eye.

Vacations -- O, not only must they end,
But on the sense of ending half-depend,
And e'en within them, in the island sun,
The bliss of being knows the moments run,
Pleasures half-shadowed with the lovely pain
Of nevermore to come your way again:
So fly our cameras, spears to time impale,
But fixing bits of past, never prevail
To hold the future and its dying light,
Where everything is precious to the sight.

Perhaps these thoughts creep in because our tour,
Northbound on Kauai's loop road, round the shore,
That morning took a back seat to our talk.
My poem hesitates this scene to stalk;
Would leap it unrecorded; simply say,
We wrestled with our wider looping way,
And popped the bubble of the near and now
To grip the issues of the when and how --
What to come home to, whither we were bound,
Our mothers' deaths, the change. Topics profound,
And meantime, out the window, mountains green
Retreated to a half-uncolored scene,
And ocean, straight and steady on our right,
Belied a circling motion to the light
As round the little island wound the road.
But Kauai intervened its garden goad:
Wailua Falls arrested talk and car
To reimpose the wonders where we are.

A strange, half-thwarted day of memories
Designed to cameras more than people please.
I almost didn't want a day of driving,
Insulated from the great arriving
Calling still and vaguely from the Isle,
In taunting echoes down each windowed mile;
What's more, the loop road, holding to the sea
And pinning us to the periphery,
Broke vistas of unprecedented glory
Inward, to the great forbidden story
Át the heart, where wild and roadless heights
Piled verdant cliffs toward mist-concealed delights.
Each roadside overlook and pullout pass
Was like a diorama walled in glass:
Ecstatic celebration of the heart,
Impossible to touch, reduced to art,
'Til all Kauai's epochal scenery
Became a sort of grand machinery.
Oh, fie my churlish mood. 'Twas much to love,
'Twas pleasure in the very drive to move,
To cover ground, to see the land, explore
Each treasure greater than the one before:
Wailua Falls, dual thunder of the flumes
That rocket from the ledge in snowy plumes
Abreast our car, dive down the deeping hole
Where sun-baked stratas ring the rocky bowl;
Opaekaa Falls, hid on the other side,
Hangs silver down its breast, a waiting bride;
Wailua River overlook, between,
Sees sleeping waters wend through dreams of green,
Here, fertile meadows picnic toward the sea,
There, jungle mountains club romantically,
The total panorama spread below
Heartbreaking in its Indian tableau;
Now Kilauea Lighthouse, giant's thumb
By ocean's swells and mistrals battered dumb,
Extends its brave white beacon like a station
Over an unceasing detonation;
Walk the point, the wind consumes our words,
The wheeling skies are whitecapped with wild birds,
The sundered cliffcoasts march into a haze
Of sun-dimmed blast and dark prismatic sprays;
(Quiet and inland, guidebooks highly rate
The Kilauea Market's luncheon plate;
Our appetites aroused, we try the fish
And revel in the gourmet-level dish);
The Princeville turnout-view of Hanalei!
(Don't blame me if I rhyme it the wrong way.)
Here drivers cry like helpless kittens treed in
Bare sequioas overlooking Eden:
Paddied taro fields like checkered lakes
With little farms in coconut-palm brakes,
Fall sudden back to upward valleyed slopes
That skyward climb in velvet emerald gropes
To cloud-hid peaks faint hung with waterfalls --
The mightiest of Kauai's siren calls.



Now down from the hermetic tourist ridge,
We entered Hanalei by one-lane bridge,
And here the tiny street, soft country land,
Brought all the homey grandeur close to hand.
In evening light the massive mountain flanks
Came cuddling in their cozy amber ranks
Sheer to the edge of the road. Pocket lawns
Made secret sunlit coves between great yawns
Of rearing hillsides; jungle hid the coast,
And houses tiptoed high on peering post,
Two stories open underneath. A little town,
Hidden away, with whimsies all its own,
Was Hanalei, and made me almost quiver,
Wondering how--but--if--O, could I live here?
Hardly thought, a thumber on the road
With curly hair and weathered backpack load
Applied my brakes. We offered him a ride,
And, soon as he was comfortable inside,
He told his story: he was two days here,
By one-way ticket, armed with luck and cheer,
To stake his residence and find his fate.
Already he'd had run-ins grim and great,
Tough locals, elder welcomes, one old friend --
Now waiting somewhere up around the bend --
He'd know it when he saw it -- here it was!
And thanked us for the lift, doubly because
"No tourists pick up hitchhikers." So blessed,
We bid goodbye and wandered on, confessed
And answered, as by some attending force;
Thus, wryly laughing, kept our looping course.

The road doesn't quite loop, but makes a C,
And ends at Haena Beach, where sleepily
We parked and took a little Hyundai nap.
Then would have walked, except my sandal strap
Broke at that moment. Hobbled by the luck,
We couldn't track the "wet cave," and were stuck
Exploring sadly just a local cave,
That helpfully right off the roadway gave.
And that was the day. Sara took the wheel,
And drove us back. Three times my naked heel
I tried re-soling at a passing shop,
But though a million visions of flip-flop
Hung on the walls (I'm not a flip-flop lad),
No single pair of sandals could be had.
A message from my siren, irked at last?
The evening came, and darkness followed fast.
The Poipu Shopping Village burger place
Was fine for dinner: tired, face to face,
We totaled up our scenic overload,
And thanked the genius of the island road.
And truly, Camb, it all was to my liking;
Still, tomorrow finally I'd go hiking!

--Matt

Hawaii Day Seven

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Our condo home was handsome, airy, bright:
Glass lanai doors aflood with morning light,
While wooden shutters ushered through the breeze
Together with the rustlings of palm trees.
Our white and private third-floor balcony
O'erlooked neat lawns and villas toward the sea --
The "Kiahuna Outrigger Plantation,"
Manicured and fit to its location
Fronting on the beaches of Poipu,
But backing on some pretty country too.
Indoors, we had a tidy kitchenette,
A King-size bed, and high-speed Internet!
(Alas, my laptop balked at logging on;
The final straw, my goal of blogging gone.)
Our Number 16 villa held the rear;
We missed the sound of surf, but never fear:
I ran to fetch a nothing from the car
And Kauai mountains beckoned from afar,
Green velvet biceps flexing up a frame
For hinted vistas whispering my name.

The morning brought no flag in forward force;
I was afire to be about our course,
Wherever it might be, I didn't care,
So long as I could breathe Kauaiian air,
Explore the country, greet those magic hills,
Connect somehow with all the promised thrills
I couldn't see, but sensed, as down a trail,
An invitation through a parting veil.
But Sara (smart!) took the first morning slow,
Learning the map and plotting where to go
Throughout our week -- a necessary squeeze
Between our scheduled activities
(A dinner cruise, a helicopter ride, and, last,
An evening Féte to celebrate our past.)
The first two days alone were fully free,
With all the island loop to drive and see:
Good plan to pause, although I chafed to sit,
To groom the time and make the features fit.

Outbound at last! We honored first our host,
Exploring Poipu and the Southern coast:
Drove up through meadows to Koloa town,
The sea air fresh and clean, our windows down --
No more Big Island voggy smell or haze,
Blue skies decanted purest sunny days
With clear-cut bumper clouds of snowy white
And temperate trades that kissed with cool delight
The tropic skin. And everywhere is green!
No razor lava rivers to be seen,
Just soft red dirt abloom with fertile grasses,
Verdancy from coast to mountain passes,
Forests, fields, high peaks, all deep and lush,
From tamest condo lawns to wildest bush.
The country roads were small, speed 25,
A friend to gawking round you as you drive.
Ah, Muse! The errands of our day were few;
We touristed the towns as tourists do,
And each must get a mention in my song,
But through them, run a thread of music strong,
A background soaring, firm and sweet and high,
For this enchanted emerald land, Kauai!

In search of breakfast, first we made our way
To Kalaheo, finding their café,
A local favorite, tasty, homey, cute,
And worthy of a Travelogue's repute.

Scant miles onward, tending to the West,
We found, deserted on its day of rest,
The town of Hanapepe. Silence reigned
Upon a red-dirt strip that seemed unchanged,
Its shack-like homes in picturesque decay
Preserving a Hawaiian yesterday
In stillness, heat, and woods. The shops were shut;
We walked their "swinging bridge" over the cut
(A narrow river brooding still and brown),
And bought papayas on the edge of town
From a closed shack with dollar-payment box,
Then peeled away, back to the world of clocks
And running time, a mile down the road.

From there, we hit the beach! The bright sand glowed,
And from the rim of azure waterworld
The crystal hillocks rose and rolled and curled
In crushing softness and in silky hiss
Upon the smile of beach their fulsome kiss;
The clustered palms, like asterisks on stems,
Fringed the near headlands, while, like giant gems,
The cliff-cut mountains held the faded distance.
Here, released from all adult resistance,
Straight into the booming surf we dove,
Submitting to the bliss of Nature's love,
Embraced and tumbled, as by father's arms
Whose roughhouse bundling both wins and warms,
A power universal in its sway
Expressed in perfect trust and laughing play.
All up and down the beach, real children run,
Shrieking with joy, between the surf and sun,
And at their side, the ranks of every age,
Distinctions lost of Senator or sage,
Enjoy the same experience the same
As those newly arrived to join the game.
A lesson no philosophy could teach
Embodied here: who doesn't love a beach?

The windy sky turned grey, then quickly black,
And we were subject to a squall's attack,
Chased underneath a camp-roof with a crowd
As stinging rains blew sideways, whistling loud,
Then just as quickly blew off on its way,
Trailing a misty skirt across the Bay,
And sunlight ruled as tranquil as before --
A genuine Hawaiian-style downpour.

Our map gave Salt Pond Beach a snorkel star;
It wasn't so, and, drying in the car,
We drove instead to find the "Spouting Horn,"
A lip of ledge by heaving waters torn,
Where one small blowhole, set back from the coast,
With every slugging swell shoots out a ghost
Of milky-gowned and human-walking spray
Thirty feet tall at times, fading away
With hollow howlings and great sucking sounds
As into backwash all of it rebounds.
Great fun, and tourists leaned behind the rail,
Trying their best, often to no avail,
To time the moment of the overwhelm
And get the apparition down on film.



Sun-scalded now and hungry, back we strayed,
In quest of dinner and some indoor shade,
To Poipu Shopping Village. Here my Log
Must pause to honor humble "Puka Dog,"
A mall-hole restaurant that we both adored.
The hot dog is its one and only board,
But bratty-plump and juicy, sauced with flavors
Tasty in their bright Hawaiian savors,
Lillikoi and guava-spicy relish
Filling up a meaty bun: mmm, delish!
Honor also goes to Amy there,
The counter-girl with energy to spare,
Who with her brilliant smile made us smile too,
And tipped us off to snorkel at Poipu.

But first we visited a higher station
Fór our special dinner reservation,
"Hyatt Grand Resort," just down the road.
Amid its opulence-on-overload,
Still dressed in shorts and sandals, we were seized
By a tuxedo'd usher, who was pleased
To sit us down (quite hidden from the hall)
And show us menus from the heavy, tall
And gilded book of restaurants they command.
Each offered us a different wonderland;
We picked the one most aura'd of romance,
And booked our table three days in advance.

The sun was setting, and at my beseech
We hastened from the Hyatt to the beach,
Arriving with the sun abreast the sea
And all the evening like a tapestry.
At Poipu now, in light limpid and still
That seemed with liquid gold the air to fill,
The amber sandbar cupped in by a reef
That hushed the sapphire surf to scalloped leaf,
And other swimmers quietly afloat,
With many telltale snorkel-tubes to note,
We donned our masks and slipped into the scene
As if into a travel magazine.
O contrary desires, sea or sky,
Immerse with angels or uplift the eye
To glorious immolation of the day
In purpling clouds and pink descending ray,
Or swim with Sara's limbs dimly afar,
Or stand beside her, seeing the first star?
At last a fellow snorkeler called us down
To where a turtle of the sea, dun-brown,
In tilted hover just beneath the wave
Nosed gently in and round his rocky cave,
Nor minding our attentions, lost in grace,
Weightless of fin and dignified of face,
Pursued his great slow business till the light
Diminished into underwater night
And we stood up.

That night we drank champagne
Recumbent on our lanai, in a rain,
Almost, of starshine from the dizzied crush
Of galaxies above, as island-lush
Across the vault of moonless ocean sky
As emerald is below upon Kauai.


--Matt

Hawaii: Interlude

.

Soft, Camb, and pause. Our Travellers are asleep,
So let us break the rush of things external,
Take this quiet time and touch the kernel --
Sara and myself. A subject deep:
This trip, you know, was part defiant leap
From vales of death to find the green and vernal
Source of love, lost in its pledge eternal
Somewhere up the slippery, sere and steep
Canyon of years, a promise left to keep.

And now? How this our anniversary,
Half-finished, feels a warming nursery,
Transforming grief to fragile shoots of art,
Here and her own, like sketched and cursory
Pathways from sunny nature to the heart,
An inward greening, and an upward start.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Six

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Today we island-hopped. A strange sensation,
Having airplane flights in mid-vacation.
Áll the rush and stress of journey ended,
Farewells to the places we'd befriended:
Hotel restaurant breakfast, then we sat
Beside a koi pond at the laundromat;
Our just-dry clothes we bustled into bags,
We rustled up our tickets and our tags
And for the last time rode our rental car
Across the lava fields, not very far,
To Kona airport, where we first came in --
But yet our trip was newly to begin.
A skateboard camber upward, West and North,
And hardly had our aircraft sallied forth
Than down it swung to drop us on Kauai
(By pause in Honolulu). As the sky
Went silver, pink, and settled into dark,
As if by pardon, we could disembark
Into a new adventure, all-new place,
Redoubled romance and true Traveller's grace.



The headlights of our second rental car
Show road, and little else of where we are
As through the shadowed foliage we proceed,
Guided by tourist map too small to read.
And though I swear and clench the steering wheel,
Insult the useless road signs, O I feel,
In every breath of clean Pacific air
That through the open windows stirs my hair,
In every hint of hills that upward loom
Like chunks of deeper night in darker bloom
Against the stars, a welcome and a thrill,
Excitement near too strong for sitting still,
A call, a song, my spirit in reply --
Yes, even now I know I love Kauai!
My smiling Sara understands my mood,
Discharged in verbal energetic flood
Of hot impatience at the balky roads
(And nothing is the matter with the roads);
We find our condo village easily,
With tiki torches down the lane to see
Illuminated hints of a lagoon
In a soft jungle. Registered, and soon
Directed to our cabin for the night,
At once, with Sara, I must needs take flight
And lead her down the pathway toward the shore:
In darkness, drawn on by the breathing roar
And open black ahead, we slip between
The bark and glow of indoor TV screen
In condo hamlets, and at last we reach
The open arc of empty moonless beach.

And O, the constellations crowd the sky
As barefoot down the seamless sand we fly;
And O, the surf engulfs our travel pants
As, laughing, in and out we daring dance;
My Sara, O, I write this, and we seem
Forever in our first Kauaian dream!

--Matt

Hawaii Day Five

.

Come Sara's birthday in this magic place!
The morning sunlight found her happy face
Gazing from off the hotel balcony
Over the ever-scintillating sea
Bequeathing teal-green corals to her eyes
Beneath the bluest of Hawaiian skies.

That evening (it would be our last in Kona)
By arrangement prior, we'd be shown a
Classic Hawaiian luau. Oy. Til' then,
We breakfasted at local "Bongo Ben,"
A beachy hangout on our Kona strip,
And, creaky from the last day's driving trip,
Stayed slow and local here. We browsed the town:
Tourists and natives driving up and down
The single road between the boardwalk wall
And line of claptrap shop and market-stall;
Cerulean surf reared fountain-crowns of spray
And out beyond, upon the sunlit bay,
A cruise ship lay at anchor, kayaks flashed,
The tour boats hovered and the swimmers plashed;
Ashore, the crowds of Visitors meandered,
Tanned and lotioned, through the shops that pandered
Tó their appetite for flowered shirts,
Drinks, flip-flops, snorkels, shave ice, sarong skirts;
Warren of little alleys, brilliant signs
Competing in their half-askew designs,
All crammed and toppling in this tiny focal
Point of tourist pleasure: Kona local.

Through the flux of sunny revelry,
We found the stately House of Hulihee,
An 1830s residence of Kings
Replete with royal furniture and things:
We took the tour and tried our best to glean
Some culture, but the blue inviting scene
Beyond the windows beckoned us again
Outdoors. We photographed the grounds and then
We drove around the headland, found a beach,
And stayed there for some hours. There we each
Bent to our art, me writing poetry,
And Sara sketching ledges on the sea,
Companiable in silence in the shade,
Secluded in a little wooded glade,
Sand in our toes, we whiled away the time --
A birthday afternoon of the sublime.

The hotel had a saltwater lagoon
And, on returning, she and I were soon
Confronting it with snorkels on our head.
Uncertain, balancing a draw and dread,
Both having merely practiced this before,
We tiptoed to the shallow baby shore
And waded in, then, with the smallest shove,
Were face-down, breathing, seeing, and -- in love!
O wonders of the underwater world!
Discovered there in liquid sunlight swirled:
Haven of angels, creatures sweet and bright,
Unveiling grace and pageant to our sight,
Golds, carmines, neons, striped and piped in hues
Fantastic to behold, in ones and twos
Or small armadas decked with racing banners,
Delicate in flight, with gentle manners
Nosing at the reefs or rippled sand
Or vanished from a slow extended hand,
All iridescence, each a living wish,
Unearthly glory -- dare you call them fish?

Deep may we plumb the mystery of why
Such beauty seems designed for human eye.
Who placed here things of pure aesthetic pleasure?
Whát's this game, Muse, of your hidden treasure?
Whý do meteors, blazing through the stars,
Trailing their dead incinerating scars
Across the vault of heaven, flash like gold?
What ciphered story are we being told?
Why look we, seek we, travel we, to find
These things that in themselves are blank and blind?
What in us vibrates to these signals sent
Down ocean bottoms or o'er firmament,
Finding our secret souls reflected there
In truest Beauty, Art beyond compare?
We stand, we leave the tidepool, doff our mask,
Equipment fitting us to only ask.

At sunset, with our freshly-showered hair
And casual Hawaiian evening wear,
We lined up on the lawn to join the luau.
What's a self-respecting Muse to do, now?
Spectacle of unrepentant schmaltz!
But somehow, through its tackiness and faults,
Its grunting beefcake dancers, Hula girls,
Its fire jugglers trading baton twirls,
Its band that switched from slide guitar to drumming
Equal in their skill, equally numbing
Ín their flat and passionless effect,
Its grinning gladhand host whose dialect
Was kin to tones of AM radio
As, interspersing jokes, he led the show,
Its dancing based on brute athletic tests,
Its plastic shells on Polynesian breasts,
Its rows of staring tourists down each table
Slurping Mai Tais (all that you were able) --
Somehow, yes, some artistry came through,
If only in the purity of true
(I mean Historic) stamp of stereotype,
A value in the very trope of tripe,
As crystallizing a regime of mind,
Half out to conquer, half to seek and find,
That (don't deny it, Muse) used art as violence
Half to love and half to kill these Islands.

O, my sweetie, in your yellow lei,
A smiling rider on your natal day,
Let's smile together in the lilting beat
And pile our trays with pork and fish to eat;
We'll watch the sun go down behind the palms
And sell our luau dreaming back as alms.

--Matt

Home From Hawaii and Blog Plans

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We're back home in Seattle. Apologies to any readers for my lack of blogging! Two factors conspired to keep me from it -- first, the days were generally too busy, from morning till night; and second, I never did find a reliable Internet connection. At least on the Big Island I found the occasional hotspot here and there, but once we went to Kauai I was completely blacked out. It was ironic, because our condo CAME with a high-speed connection...but technical difficulties with my laptop prevented me from being able to use it.

We did have a fantastic trip after I left off. But don't worry: I plan to continue blogging it, day by day, in retrospect. What's more, now that I have the time, I'm going to do it in poetry, as was my original intention. I realize that I never explicitly telegraphed that intention, and I see (now that I have the Internet back) that my only comment has been a scream of horror, but in true Vogon fashion I'm going to continue on (sorry, Robb). My conviction is that prose descriptions of Hawaii vacations have about the same hidden ubiquity and ultimate value as tourist photos of the Lincoln Memorial, and though my verse may likely have even less to recommend it, my working theory is that this is the only way to get better.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Four

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Another strange, half-thwarted, half-magical day on the Big Island. This was our day to drive all the way to the Volcano National Park, stopping at the famous Punalu'u black sand beach. Both were a bust (in different ways), but chance encounters led to a great experience along the way.

Before heading out we bought some picnic food (a combination of fresh mangoes, bananas, and cherimoyas from the local farmer's market, and fried chicken from Safeway), and stopped briefly at a local coffeehouse where I was finally able to make a blog post (though I had to borrow an electric socket at the real estate agent next door). At the coffeehouse the barista girl recommended taking a detour to South Point, which she said had scenic cliffs.

First there was the long drive around the bottom of the Big Island, retracing our route from the day before and continuing further. It poured rain on and off as we drove. The scratch coffee jungle gave way to macadamia orchards, to black swaths of bare lava fields, to grasslands, back to jungle: a rapid series of microclimates alternating too fast to keep track of. Towns were tiny, much was uninhabited. Some parts seemed to remind us of other places we'd been -- Arizona, Connecticut -- as if donning momentary phantoms from our brains, but a second look would pierce the illusion and reveal a land totally alien. Sara and I compared notes on whether we liked the Big Island. We came to the conclusion that we wouldn't want to live here, and that it certainly didn't live up to the standard image of Hawaii, but nevertheless there was a strong reality to it. It was no theme park: aside from the water sports it wasn't really a tourist destination at all; rather it was a visit to an impoverished corner of the USA where people eked out a hard living from a harsh and fascinating land.

We were on a wary lookout for the turnoff to South Point, not trusting Hawaii's road signs, but we needn't have worried: the Point itself appeared ahead of us as a gigantic ironing-board-shaped plateau, yellow-walled, starting at our level and running horizontally seaward while the rest of the land sloped away alongside it. It was like the prow of a ship extending from an enormous launching slip. We took the turnoff and were immediately in a different world, the single-lane road running through tamed grasslands, thin woods, horse and dairy farms. Eventually we did descend, through a wild rolling prarie of windswept yellow turf, with here and there tortured single trees shredded backwards by the wind, the wall of ocean approaching far ahead. The land seemed totally empty as far as the eye could see to left or right, but it too was farmed; every ten miles or so a cluster of salt-eaten tin shacks went by in a barbed-wire enclosure, marking the center for wandering cows, goats, and horses.

Things then got surreal: in the midst of this hardscrabble prarie we passed a NASA deep-space tracking station, its huge radio dishes aimed obliquely off Earth; then, a few miles further, the little road ran through the rusted-out remains of an abandoned and derelict wind farm. A more modern one was visible operating far below, closer to the coast (the ocean was still miles away), but nothing could improve on these huge rust-streaked stems with frozen or missing propellors, planted amid blown-down barbed-wire fences and chewing cows. Sara and I weren't sure what world we were in -- we half-expected to find some shotgun-toting farmer building a moon rocket in his barn out here.

We finally started to run out of peninsula, and the road narrowed down to a single car-width, dirt shoulders on each side for passing. The paved strip got older and rougher, and eventually petered out altogether into craters and yellow dirt, and we were at the cliffs.

The cliffs (the Southernmost point of the United States) were not only incredibly scenic, but it turned out they were quite popular with the locals -- for cliff-jumping! We were eating our picnic and wondering what these wooden platforms built over the lip were for, when five or six jeeps and trucks came dust-storming down the road, and a whole bunch of twenty-year-old guys and girls leaped out, ran to the edge, and started psyching themselves up for the jump. We wound up watching and talking with them for an hour or so, along with some other tourists who were there. The drop was a good forty feet, I'd guess, into deep clear blue water, the cliffs being hollowed out underneath so the jumpers landed far from land. Getting back up was an act of daring too: there was a ladder hung from one platform, but it ended several feet above the water, so they had to time the swells, put their feet on a strung rope that was nearby, seize the bottom rung with their hands on the uplift and pull themselves up from there. It was thrilling to watch, and Sara and I both snapped lots of pictures. Sara especially got some fantastic action shots of the kids in mid-leap.

The area also had a big open blowhole a few dozen feet back from the edge, where you could look down and see the ocean surging and fizzing in the underground rocky cave, with great echoing sounds like a plunger working.

South Point was the highlight of the day. Back on the road we drove another long distance to the Punalu'u black sand beach, an anticlimax. (The whole island is black lava rock, why wouldn't the sand be black? And why would you go to a beach that makes you look like you've been playing in an ash dump anyway?) It was fun to be completely in sync with Sara; we both looked at it for five minutes, said "Yep," and moved on. The best part here was a wild black cat that frequented the trash can at the parking area, leaping up and nosing in with his black tail waving. He seemed the mischievous spirit of the beach, happily collecting spoils from all the lured tourists.

Then we drove even further to the Volcano National Park, and this was the worst of all. We arrived at twilight, as planned, but it was hard to tell, because the closer we got the more we were enveloped in a purple-black miasma of the vog. It got so we could hardly see a thing to either side. The smell started to get to us, and as a soupy darkness fell we wondered about the wisdom of driving towards a volcano. Then, when we got to the gate, it turned out that the park was mostly closed because of high sulfur dioxide levels. You could still go in, but they were warning people against it, especially those with respiratory problems. Since we'd come all this way we paid our $10, but Sara has had athsma in the past, and we'd hardly gone a mile past the Visitor's Center in the swirling dark (past big flashing signs and mounted placards warning us away) when she declared a turnaround. I was happy to oblige. We had one glimpse of a steam forest (mysterious white smoke rising here and there on a hillside of stunted pines in the fog dusk) and then we were speeding back down the mountain Northward, trying to reach breathable air, laughing about the idea of a National Park of toxic gases.

Night fell eerily early, pitch darkness at 6:30, which we heard later was normal for the Southern island, the mountain and cloudbank blocking the sunset. But it just added to our sense of the surreal on the two hours' drive back to Kailua.

A failed day? Well, not really. It wasn't the usual vacationing, but it was weirdly magical and educational. The Island is showing unexpected stuff to us.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Three

(Switching to prose for efficiency's sake; I haven't had anywhere near as much free time to write as I thought I would! There's also been the amusing saga of trying to find a working internet connection on the Kona Coast. All in all call it a "noble experiment." Back to straight diary.)

------------

For Day Three we were our own guides, and didn't fare nearly as well. We took our rental car and drove off to explore South Kona, in search of (1) a sandy beach, and (2) Kealakekua Bay, supposedly a great snorkeling destination. We didn't find either. The main road angled at once up the mountainside and settled in a thousand feet above the water; individual roads trickled beachward without posted signs of any kind. We submitted to the whims of the travel gods, though, and wound up having an entertaining day.

First, it was enlightening just driving in Hawaii. The main road through Kona gets very narrow and winding, and the region has a rural poverty within a kind of scratch jungle. The ubiquitous black lava rocks front the road, which is then overhung with rioting fronds, vines, walking root systems -- an impenetrable tangle. Several little coffee farms thrust handwritten signs out of hidden dirt driveways, inviting us in for tastings (Kona Coffee is the wine of this region). On our right the occasional break in the greenery offered aerial footage of the island coast far below, a dust-brown shovel meeting the misty blue.

Contrary to its image, Hawaiian weather is not all sun. A perpetual cloudlid smothers the mountaintop, thick and grey and blurred smooth by "vog," the toxic gas released from the volcano; the mornings are sunny on the coast, but by midday the vogbank creeps overhead, and rain was commencing as we drove on. The vog has a certain smell that, coming and going, accompanied us throughout our stay in Kona.

We did finally find a turnoff marked Kealakekua Bay, but partway down we veered off to follow another sign for the "painted church," an attraction we'd heard about. This proved primtive and somewhat sad, and we never did get back on the road to Kealakekua. Instead, we gave a lift to a native Hawaiian whose car had broken down in the church parkinglot; he directed us on a different road to the highway, where he got out to hitch, and pointed us on a route to our bay that proved all wrong. For a while we were following a single-lane unpainted road straight through the blasted lava field near the coast; after luring us for miles it turned back uphill; we backtracked; and finally by slipping through a tiny Public Access driveway near a State Park we came out at the coast. We thought this was Kealakekua Bay, but we discovered later that it was Honaunau. Still, we parked, offloaded towels and beach bag, and I went snorkeling.

This wasn't a "beach" per se; there was no sand, just a leopard-print of black ledges and tidepools out to the fretting surf; still, it was a popular hangout, with people swimming, sunning on the rocks, and generally hanging out. As it was raining, it wasn't a great day for sunbathing, and with the surf on the sharp rocks it wasn't the best location for me to practice snorkeling for the first time. Still, Sara gamely sat down and filled her sketchbook with speed-sketches of beach people, and I plunged in and made a go of it. I seemed to get the gist pretty quickly, and saw some pretty tropical fish, and climbed successfully out on the rocks to discover that I'd grown several bleeding scrapes on my legs and an unknown spine in my heel. Three young girls were practicing their ukeleles as I walked back to Sara through the tidepools, and I felt initiated into Hawaii.

From there we continued back toward Kailua, our town, in search of a sand beach, and we still didn't find it, but we wound up for lunch at a luxury resort whose restaurant terrace overlooked a vast kept tidepool. The tidepool boasted a wealth of undersea activity, clearly visible from our table at the rail above: five sea turtles lounged in a pile on a ledge, like a bunch of stone salad bowls thrown together, with fins; there were more tropical fish, and a flounder.

And that was the extent of our adventuring for the day. The way we saw it, we'd be staying on a sand beach on Kauai, so we figured the Big Island was trying to show us what it had to offer. We appreciated it.


--Matt

Hawaii Day Two (Part 2)

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Each falls had individuality
But mainly as a window-frame to see
The different lives different Hawaiians led
Across the varied Hilo watershed.

1

The first was nestled right within the town,
A local feature with a wide renown;
Bused flocks of Japanese were smiling there
But, coming to it, one was more aware
Of Hilo's little streets and boxy homes,
All balanced on the lava's dips and domes
(Though to the eye, lush woods and lawns appear,
No leveling of earth can happen here).
Each house hode high on variegated stilts,
Accomodating to the fastened tilits,
Cheap houses with the shallow-angled roofs,
Big Government-style schools -- old hubris proofs
Of anchoring a nation to the crust
And scaring up a poor domestic trust.

2

Along a narrow road, we played the rube
And clicked a trickle from a lava tube.
The foliage was thick and polyglot,
The wood bridge reeked of tar, the sun was hot.

3

Akaka Falls -- a tourist destination;
Parking lot and tongues from every nation,
Herded down a stairway with a rail
That passes for a secret jungle trail
To pause upon a landing overlook
And view the scene you saw in the guidebook.
The falls itself seemed preening, across space,
Before the cameras passing it apace,
Turning its queenly ribbon like a train
The likes of which you'd never see again.



4

Joe's tour turned local; we began to rove
To private lands. First, a banana grove!
We rode a grassy track and parked for lunch
Amid a stunted orchard where each bunch
Was bagged and tied off podlike up above.
A falls was near -- who cares? I fell in love
With the vast inland grasslands, rolling high
In sussurating silence 'neath the sky
To the blue smudge of mountains. Handcut roads
With far-off flatbed trucks waiting their loads
Serviced the empty empire of food --
Hawaii in an old plantation mood.
Here in the orchard, man-size leaf-fronds made
A green-brown lace of slowly twitching shade;
The long banana aisles held the trash
Of dead leaves, trunk stumps and machete slash.
No freebies here, but Joe cut sugar cane;
We sucked it for dessert, drove on again.
(Oh, just in case this wasn't yet bizarre,
At lunch Joe pulled his bagpipes from the car,
An for a while the tropic afternoon
Resounded to the skirling Highland tune.

5

The last was best: finally we got to swim!
A steep dirt road came level at the brim
Of an enchanted deep-green sunken lake.
High on the other side, twin jets did break
And side by side plunge near a hundred feet
Down the sheer cliff that walled off the retreat.
And O, the shock and joy of getting wet,
Cleansing the hot day's mileage and sweat!
The three of us swam happy and alone,
Floating the deep or leaping from the stone
That offered lumpy platforms on one side.
Of course I set my sights, and gamely tried,
To swim beneath the falls. Easily broached,
The task turned serious as I approached,
Fighting the chop and spray with mighty strain
As if against a pocket hurricane
To face a huge continuing explosion,
Hammer of this fathomless erosion,
Inches from my nose. I lost my nerve
And, treading water, figured it would serve
To simply hold my arm beneath the blast:
I felt the skyborne pistons punching fast,
Bruising my underarm but sweetly warm,
Driving it down into the foaming storm.
I slipped "between" the bombings, Sara too,
And pressed to the cold cave wall we looked back through
The darkly backlit arcs of falling spray --
The triumph of our waterfalling day.

The long road back; two other tour guides drove,
Both charming, as was Joe, and like him strove
To entertain their charge with endless chat.
The strange result was, when at last we sat
Exhausted at the hotel bar, we found,
Lifting our Mai Tais in the ceaseless sound
Of surf, and staring at the ruby sun
Kissing the waves to end our day of fun
With warm caresses of the evening weather --
Only now could we converse together!

--Matt

(scroll down for the original prose version of the ending)













For the record, the fifth and final waterfall of our tour was the best, because we finally got to swim! This was also on private land, accessible by a steeply-descending dirt road that leveled out right at the grassy edge of a perfect sunken lake. The other side was walled in by a sheer cliff, with TWO waterfalls jetting out at the top, falling side by side a good hundred feet It was a wise decision to put this one last in the tour after the long hot day in the car, because swimming immediately washed it all away and left a joyful aftertaste.

Of course I had to try swimming under the falls, but what seemed a romantic photo opportunity from afar turned serious as I swam closer: I had to fight against a miniature hurricane and fierce current even to get close, and then I was staring at something like an ongoing explosion in front of me. I had sudden images of firehoses turned on protestors in the south and didn't care to sample the experience. So I went "between" the two explosions and got behind, where in the cold wind against the wet rock I had a great view of the two falls arcing over me.

Joe handed us off to a fellow tour guide and his wife for the drive back (Brandy and Oleathia; Brandy being the male); Brandy was just as talkative as Joe, but in a more joky vein, and the odd part of the day was that Sara and I experienced all this without really having a moment to talk amongst ourselves the whole time. We caught up in a rush back at the hotel bar, with a Mai Tai and a huge Africanesque sun flattening its rubicund sphere through bands of clouds to the watery horizon.

Hawaii Day Two (Part 1)

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The Royal Kona bar, hard by the sea,
This early morning shelters only me,
Tables deserted round its flagstone curve,
No waiters hovering to greet and serve;
Good private time to write, before the day
With all its marching news gets in the way.
Our hotel's built atop a thrust of rock
That roars and shudders to the endless shock
Of great Pacific swells crashing to shore.
The bar is built right at the drama's door,
Where adamant ledge defends with mountain force
Against the sea's insinsuating course:
Foaming explosions burst and seethe and surge,
Shatter in lambent teal, retreat, then urge
Themselves upon themselves another time,
Deep detonations in eternal rhyme,
And stronger blows now fountain a sunlit spray,
Brief rainbows arc, the rock swallowed away,
Only to surface, streaming from its pools,
Shrugging the cream and liquid turquoise jewels
And breasting its blackened vigor to the sun,
Unchanged and ready for another one.
Why can't I look away? Why is this all
I came to see, and whither comes the call?

The white van waited with its open doors:
We'd signed for one of these prepackaged tours,
"Waterfall Journeys," C Big Island Inc. --
I felt the Muse's freedom spirit sink.
Excursion tours, my Poet? Are you sure?
What's next? Vacation chosen by brochure?
And yet -- this Big Isle is SO big, so new,
A wandering ride to give an overview,
To take us further-fielding than we would,
Unveil us more Hawaii -- it felt good.
Now, a surprise as we approached the bus:
The "tour group" meeting here -- was only us!
A private escort; Joe would be our guide,
The "bus" his little Kia. Snug inside,
We climbed the mountain. Kona fell away,
And we began a strange, successful day.

Joe was a wiry guy, tee-shirt and jeans,
Tattoos and slicked-back hair, master of scenes,
Regaling us with facts for every sight
Or memories of his every teenage fight,
Or histories of the islands, odd but true,
And how he saw it from his point of view,
Or tales of his extended family,
Their various businesses and progeny;
We learned the breeds of guava, types of trees,
Names of his kids, when's safe to swallow seeds,
A friendly spiel, truly encyclopedic,
That left us in the back seat slightly seasick.
More power, Joe! The Muse, she likes your style,
Approves your every profitable mile;
You showed us two Hawaiis through the day;
We wouldn't have it any other way.

We drove the Saddle Road to Hilo side
Oe'r mountain landscapes withered, brown and dried,
A high volcanic desert, harsh to Man --
They train the troops here for Afghanistan --
Weird cinder cones like great red pimples rose
Across the blasted gorse and lava flows;
The shield of Mauna Kea, wide and dun,
Held dead and distant highlands to the sun;
Then down the other side through growing green,
A belt of witchy trees and ferns between,
And into viny jungle -- flowers, fruit --
And stopped to view a hidden lava chute.
The shadow of a fallen skylight gave
A steep descent into the sunken cave,
Tinkling with trickled water, hung with ropes
Of tree roots, also on the walls in frozen gropes;
The tube extended from the fall of light
Deep into darkness and on out of sight
Down forms of weird extended lava stone,
Melted like chocolate fudge or knobbed like bone,
Crumbled like cake or shelved like river sand --
I wandered in as far as I could stand,
Till, looking back, the opening glowed green,
A far-off spotlight of a foliate scene.




To "Waterfalls!" our tour then took its way,
And five of them filled up the later day.
Of waterfalls, well, each one has its name,
But in the essence, all display the same:
A river into sudden gulfs of space,
A silken ribbon on the rocky face,
Packets of water like white falcons diving,
Brutal thunder of their mass arriving
Into a greenblack devastated pool
Whose sunilt silver rings ever unspool
Across the water to the grassy mere
To draw the helpless staring tourists here.
Furious motion ever holding still --
What is it in this scene that holds the will?
But what is motion? What is solid earth?
Follow some water from its upper birth,
Down past the rock to pool, do it again,
A third, a fourth time, lift your head, and then
Reel drunken as the rocks will melt and dance,
Bend upward flows of trees; within this trance
All comes unanchored, universes wheel,
Impermanence is borne on you as real:
Our lives are water: here the river drops,
Sparkles a bit in air, and then it stops.



--Matt

Hawaii - Day One

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Old Wordsworth never took an airplane flight,
Nor gazed with godlight elevated sight
Upon the Earth spread out in azure purity--
And Shelley never railed against Security.

Hail Muse! We travellers of the modern world,
Scoring your altitudes with wings unfurled,
Viewing your visions, sporting in your skies,
Your lofty stratas open to our eyes,
By rights should rain the world with poetry
Pure from your aery hospitality.
And yet, torpedoed in our steel machines,
Shades pulled against your grand eternal scenes,
Cramped out from windows six or seven deep,
Benumbed by droning habit into sleep,
Slaves in the hold of commerce, we sit dumb,
And Poets very few of us become.

My shade is up: the wide Pacific breast
Rolls under foaming clouds out to the West,
Over the curved horizon of the ball,
And water fills the four horizons all.
We're flying to Hawaii -— magic words!
I hear their glory mid the deafened herds.
O Muse, forgive our trespass of your space
And let me glimpse your freckled, smiling face
From out the forms and castles of your throne,
Finding my window, singling out my own:
Lend me a sniff of sky, a scrap of cloud,
To justify vacations to the crowd.

Our plane touched down in Kona at midday.
We disembarked the fond old-fashioned way,
Onto the tarmac, free to wander in,
Breathe the true air and let the trip begin.
Thus mine and Sara's anniversary
Started with open skies, humidity,
And tropic heat that reined our mainland race
And softened us into the Island pace.
We find our luggage, claim our rental car,
And, sweating, start to realize where we are.

What foreign scenes! What vast and alien land,
Hawaii, from the mountains to the sand
Stretched down across a wide and ragged plain
Under a smoggy sky of brooding rain
While yet the sun slants merciless across --
A lunar land of history and loss.
The road runs through the broken lava field,
Whose tumbled cubes seem dirt, plowed for a yield,
Almost like you could crumble it in your hand --
They're razor rocks. It's hard to understand.
The yellow gorse and palms cling for a perch,
And human structures too lick from the lurch,
Rebuilt across the wreckage, spanking new,
Or ticky-tack and lucky. From the few
Town streets descending to the island edge,
Blue ocean rises like a solid ledge,
A wall of nothingness rimming the world,
And everything's turned back and inward curled.
An Isle of Conquest: Nature's, also Man's --
The renovation of utopian plans
In ceaseless fierce replacement, rude and raw,
The hardened lava no less than the law;
Caldera's moonscapes beetling in crags,
And, at the airport, ours and unknown flags.
And this -- all this -- is beauty! First impression,
Fruit of half a day's bewildered session --
Rocks, grass, palms, the faded old hotel,
The ghosts, the muggy air, the thudding swell --
And all we did was park our rental car,
Change into shorts, drink at the ocean bar,
Nap from the jetlag to the roaring surf,
Find a shrimp dinner down the ratty scurf
Of party restaurants on Ali'i Drive --
And O! We love it all! So green! Alive!

--Matt

T Minus 0

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The bags are packed, the house is tidy, the proverbial ducks are in the proverbial row (or at least to the extent that anyone can make them BE in a row; they're forever breaking rank to go clucking after some crumb or other, the little ones especially). At this point I believe that one can say with confidence that the odds are basically in our favor for us arriving at the airport with our correct papers and at our destination with something to wear. That will have to do, seeing as our friend Terry is picking us up at 5:30 am tomorrow for the drive to the airport, and it's currently after midnight. Thank you Terry! Don't expect too much from us tomorrow.

Well, we're off. Hawaii, a "real vacation," and various experimental metatravelogical blog posts await. Hopefully they'll be fun to read. Join us!

--Matt

Errands Errands Errands

.

While I've been working at the office, Sara has been handling the lion's share of the pre-trip tasks. Here's just a sample of what she's been doing:

• Arranged with the post office to hold our mail
• Arranged with our friend Terry to give us a ride to the airport
• Arranged with our friend Ayla to come over and water our plants while we're away (involved making her a duplicate key)
• Informed Chase bank about our trip (see earlier blog entry)
• Took a day-long class and renewed her massage license to prevent it from expiring while she's away
• Arranged with our car broker to take over selling our pickup truck while we're away (long story; we're trying to swap our Tacoma for a Subaru Outback)
• Arranged with the boarding stable and friends to take care of her horse Percy while we're away (involved buying oats, vitamins, etc.)
• Returned various library books
• Rescheduled various appointments
• Worked out her art supply kit for the trip (see below**)

Big hugs and kudos to my sweetie for taking care of all these errands!

A tired Sara at Cloud City Coffee. Shopping almost done!

I joined the non-stop preparation ride yesterday, and together we spent the whole Saturday loop-the-looping through further errands. I bought clothes for the trip...Sara got a bikini top (very cute!) to replace the one she ordered at Lane Bryant that due to a delay isn't going to arrive until after we're gone (grrr)...we bought a second digital camera...many other shops and sundries were involved. It was 10:00 pm by the time we finally toppled home and spilled our big plastic bags onto the bed.

We're almost ready to go...

** Regarding Sara's art supply kit, she's eager to do a lot of painting and sketching in Hawaii, and in fact she's going to keep her artist's blog going while we travel, posting what she draws. Yes, that's right -- we'll both be blogging our way through Hawaii! Are we a modern couple or what? You can compare our blogs as we go! Hers is at: http://flyingponystudios.blogspot.com/.

--Matt

The Longest Day

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The last week of work is done; I'm on vacation! It's Friday evening and I'm writing at Café on the Ave in the University District; I'm at a high little table by the black-framed windows with the colored curtains; the Ave and the U. Bookstore (where I bought a notebook for the trip) are thronged with returning students under a mottled muggy sky. In three days we're off for Hawaii.

The hours at the office seemed doubly leaden today, the fluorescent rooms and ancient cubicles additionally dusty and airless. A crisis arose; I sat in on an emergency meeting; it was already half-meaningless to me. Back at my desk I tried to concentrate on work; I could barely keep my eyes open; my head was sluggish and achy. I took a walk, I took a couple of aspirin, I went out for a coffee -- I used all my workplace drugs. Finally when the big clock hit the last half hour my energy returned in a surge. I wrapped up everything I had to do, shut down my computer, tidied my desk, swung my pack over my shoulder and strode out to the street, free and feeling great. Lately I've had reason to worry about my motivation at work -- the workload has been light but I haven't been assiduous in seeking new tasks; it's a decent enough company but I've been reluctant to mount those steps to the front door every morning -- and I've sought for subconscious blocks or hidden agendas but damn, with the advent of vacation I realize that, really, I'm just seriously burnt out!

This is the first actual vacation I've had since May of 2007. I've already written about what Sara and I have been through since then. I'm the kind of person who doesn't readily admit to burnout -- I tend to disparage the notion of "recharging" in favor of addressing fundamental problems, plotting dramatic changes -- and I'm not saying that I don't have subconscious blocks or real issues to address in my life, but as I sit here sipping my good bitter latté, watching the students come and go outside the café window, feeling for the first time in over three years the bracing security of time off with a job to come back to, and a trip to Hawaii in between, I realize that "recharging" is a valid effect, and I've needed it. I'll be better at even this job when I return.

This post is more like a personal journal entry; I don't know that it holds any interest for the wider world, and in general it isn't the kind of thing I want for the blog. But there will be external scenes soon enough, and the whole point of a travelogue is to intermix the traveller with the destination, so it's only fair to prop up the ash-grey participant for your initial viewing pleasure. He's by no means satisfied with his paper-pushing career; he ever feels its slow mold on the edges of his once-literate mind; he's growing old with no solution in sight for how to give his so-called true calling its due primacy. Perhaps aiming a barely-witnessed blog at an overly-brochured island is a more than forlorn hope for such, and perhaps his vacation shouldn't even be weighted with the attempt, but what the heck, tonight the traveller and the muse are both champing at the bit, and he and she are equally willing martyrs to a faith in the panacea of the new and the inspiration of the natural world. Call him a tourist if you must. But it's time to put on a loud shirt in many ways.

--Matt

Adventures with Travel Agents

Two more days to work!

I should mention that I'm still employed at "Ballard Pterodactyl," and still on a contract basis, which means that my two weeks off will be unpaid. That's okay; we've saved up enough to cover both the trip and our butts when we get back. But it adds a tinge of reckless uncertainty to declarations of joy at the approaching end of work.

We'll be travelling for ten days, and not to give too much away in advance, but here's our basic itinerary: five days on the Big Island, followed by five on Kauai. On the Big Island we'll be staying at a hotel near the town of Kailua, on the Western side of the island; on Kauai we'll be staying at a condo on the beach at Poipu, Southern side. Those familiar with Hawaii can feel free to ooh and aah at these places, or shake your heads at our sad naivete, whichever is appropriate; we really don't know anything about where we're going. As far as I can tell from peering down at them with Google Earth, both locations look pretty.

At this point I confess that we arranged our trip through a travel agent. We gave them our dates and budget and left many of the details up to them. Now, I am NOT a big fan of travelling this way -- it runs against the grain of my do-it-yourself traveller heart (and the advice of my more adventurous friends) -- but, well, we'd used this particular agency once before with good results, and it was sort of the path of least resistance. The agency, which I'll call "Little Atlantis Travel," is in a North Seattle artery of run-down retail, alongside sad thrift stores and biker steak bars, and with its Bauhaus glass front opening to a fluorescent carpeted box of front-facing desks, its faded blue posters and big plastic globes, it looks like it's endured unchanged from the 1960s, complete with personnel. But the latter have experience and good contacts and basically seem to know what they're doing, and they wound up arranging a great vacation for us.

To break down our experience with them, it was: first funny, then infuriating, and finally positive.

The funny part happened because originally we were thinking of taking our vacation in Mexico, at some big resort along what they call the Mayan Riviera in Yucatan. In the immediate aftermath of Sara's mother's death, all we really wanted was a beach, ready alcohol, and a lot of pampering. As the months went by we recovered a little, however, and started to wonder what we would DO there. We realized we were open to other options. So we went down to Little Atlantis and said, "We want to take a ten-day vacation in the Fall, preferably involving a beach; where should we go?" It was a slow day at the agency and for an hour or so all the clerks cheerfully gathered ruund, piling ideas and pamphlets on us. Greece! A Mediterranean cruise! Costa Rica! Egypt! Israel! Hawaii! We circled the tropical globe a few dizzying times, and came home laden with a stack of glossy brochures and shrink-wrapped travel DVDs. A few dreamy days later we had settled on Hawaii, and it seemed natural to go back and let Little Atlantis recommend further.

That visit was on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend; we chose our islands, and we arranged to return on Tuesday, when they'd have picked out some options for us.

Then, out of the blue, they called Friday afternoon. They said they'd found a great airfare but they had to book it that day, and would we please give them $1000 down payment on the whole package. I couldn't believe my ears. WHAT "whole package?" Where were we staying? For how long? Were we supposed to pay up front for options we hadn't even been told about? Oh, they had chosen some hotels; at my request they gave me the names. Controlling my temper as best I could, I informed them that I certainly couldn't put money down on our vacation without knowing a few basic things about it. The clerk said, "Oh, OK, we'll see you Tuesday then," as if it was a perfectly normal process.

The thing is, it IS perfectly normal! That's what travel agents DO! It gradually sunk in to me. I'm sure travel agencies take money all the time to arrange vacation packages sites unseen to the so-called travellers. Book us something in the Caribbean, darling, wake us up when we're there. MY notion of travelling, on the other hand, nurtured on Eurail-Pass footloose sponteneity, is that you choose when and where you go, yourself. I figured that travel agents just collaborate with you on finding deals.

So I adjusted. In my immediate fury I spent a day online and at bookstores researching everything about the islands that I could find, as if we WERE arranging the trip ourselves -- but when we went back to Little Atlantis on Tuesday we wound up going with the hotels they had chosen in the first place. They actually had put together a good package. They did what we hired them to do. In the end we wound up quite happy with their choices, and we parted with mutal enthusiasm about the arrangements.

Still, it was good to actually DISCUSS said choices with them, and to know a little bit in advance about where we're going.

--Matt