Sun. Ocean. Blue. Breezes. Palm trees. Sand. Molokai in the distance.
Aerobics this am, 7:00AM. Walked from here at the Westin along Maui’s west shore. At the end of the walkway headed north is the Maui Sheraton. They have provided a historical marker, set in bronze and attached to a piece of black lava. It explains that the lava napali (cliff) just ahead was, in the belief of the Hawai’ian people one of the places where souls jump off for the afterlife.
The sign reminds me of the observation that developers name their work after what they removed to create it: Fox Run, Oak Grove Estates. Those are shameful, but when a hotel sits on land sacred even by the business owners admission, then we have moved into another category of insult. Call it blasphemy. Idolatry. Worship of a false god. Call it what you will, but imagine the feeling.
It made me consider all those Catholic churches built over Celtic holywells and all the Celtic holy days sequestered by church liturgists, then absorbed into an alien creed. The violence done to the sacred reality of another is, often, not obvious at a historical remove, but for those of us whose ancestors dressed the wells or leapt off the cliff to paradise, we remember.
At the sacred cliff I turned around and headed out on the beach. Boy, did my heart rate climb while I hiked on wet sand. (I take along my cardio rate gear when I travel.) The ocean has its way and I forgot that, walking down below the beaches crest. I thought I could move fast enough to avoid the incoming surf. Nope. Sand laden shoes and socks now drying on the lanai.
