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The Way Water Runs Down A Mountain

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Just got word that the temperature in Minnesota is -13.  Well, now.  That’s different than the 73 and sunny here.

Mario says the traffic in Bangkok bugs him, too.  Traffic in Bangkok is like rain on Mt. Wai’aleale, there’s always too much for most of us.  If I didn’t blame myself, I’d blame Bangkok traffic for my ruptured Achilles.

Am reaching a new place, hope I find that it sticks.  My goal is to have no goal.  My ambition is to have no ambition.  I want to follow the flow of the chi in my life, go with it wherever it runs, let life lead life. 

Alan Watts has this book, The Watercourse Way.  I mentioned it yesterday.  The tao is the movement of heaven and the movement of heaven, exhibited in temporary conditions surrounding us, is th way.  As we adapt ourselves to it, we blend with the season, the hour of the day, the time in our life, and other circumstances in which we find ourselves.  This the way water runs down a mountain to the sea.

Our life is a mountain stream.  At the headwaters it is full of energy and rushes quickly over the rocks and around the bends, as it gets closer to the ocean its bed widens and it travels more slowly around the bends until, spent, it merges with the ocean, our mother and our primal home.

Also, the waves do not quit.  They keep coming back, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but always there, always caressing the shore.   The wave is the ocean  as lover, stroking the flanks of Gaia.  It is this persistent loving that the Hawai’ans have named Aloha.  It is a condition to which we can conform ourselves.  Perhaps it is not temporary.

Another, slower workout today, this time toward Poipu.  As I hiked, there were whales at play, a couple breaching.  They come here for the reasons many tourists do, warm water and sex.

Travel

Scenery and Traffic

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83.  Picked up the little Cobalt and it was hot.  Sunny.  Clear.  Prediction is kids in the pools, old folks in the jewelry stores and bars.

Left the cosy confines of Camp Grand Hyatt for Lihue about 2PM.  This turned out to be the time everyone else on Kauai decided to go to Lihue.  My timing treated me to a traffic jam on an island with 58,000 people.  sigh.

At Borders (the concierge told me there were no independent bookstores.  sigh again.) I bought a few gifts and picked up Alan Watts, The Watercourse Way, a book reccommended by my teacher, Jihian Hang.  Then over to Long’s, a drugstore which carries almost everything a guy could ever need plus drugs.

Flip-flops, a mailing box, bubble wrap, People for Kate and some spray-on sun block.  Back in the car.  Again, everybody that had headed to Lihue now turned around and left along with me.  Second traffic jam.   The scenery, though, more than compensates.  Cook pines, old eroded mountains covered in green, Eucalyptus trees, an old sugar cane warehouse with rusted I-beams.  An American flag flying in the middle of a pasture on a tall pole.

Travel

Scenery and Traffic

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83.  Picked up the little Cobalt and it was hot.  Sunny.  Clear.  Prediction is kids in the pools, old folks in the jewelry stores and bars.

Left the cosy confines of Camp Grand Hyatt for Lihue about 2PM.  This turned out to be the time everyone else on Kauai decided to go to Lihue.  My timing treated me to a traffic jam on an island with 58,000 people.  sigh.

At Borders (the concierge told me there were no independent bookstores.  sigh again.) I bought a few gifts and picked up Alan Watts, The Watercourse Way, a book reccommended by my teacher, Jihian Hang.  Then over to Long’s, a drugstore which carries almost everything a guy could ever need plus drugs.

Flip-flops, a mailing box, bubble wrap, People for Kate and some spray-on sun block.  Back in the car.  Again, everybody that had headed to Lihue now turned around and left along with me.  Second traffic jam.   The scenery, though, more than compensates.  Cook pines, old eroded mountains covered in green, Eucalyptus trees, an old sugar cane warehouse with rusted I-beams.  An American flag flying in the middle of a pasture on a tall pole.

Travel

Offerings to Keoniloa, God of the Sea

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Sunny.  80.  Ocean blue.  Ocean green.  Waves steady.  Low tide today at 9:28AM.

Took a 2 hour hike along the Maha’ulepu Heritage Trail.  This is an up and down trail along the southern shore of the island.  It begins in the County Park right next to the Hyatt and heads east from Shipwrecks Beach.

At the county park an older Hawai’ian man with a great bushy white beard got out of a beat up pick up, slung a plastic bag over his shoulder and headed out along the trail.  I followed a bit later.

There was a blue tent pitched not far east of the parking lot, also not far from the sign that read No Camping in County Parks.  The trail goes up over a lithified dune into Pa’a Dunes (dry and rocky).  All along the way trails worn down by hikers, runners and island fisherfolk weave in and out, sometimes three, sometimes only one.  One trail finds shade, if there is any and another finds the edge nearest the ocean.  Through Pa’a I hiked the edge trail going out and the shade trail coming back.

After the dunes come a stretch of sandstone pinnacles (think Lake T’ai rocks) eroded by wind and rain and ocean into fantastic shapes, shapes that any Chinese literati would make a home for in their study.  On a tide pool just below the sand pinnacles I saw the Hawai’ian man waking in flip-flops collecting something from the pool area just vacated by low tide.  On the way back I went out there myself and tried to figure out what he was after.  The only thing I saw were sea slugs.  Are they edible?

The trail runs up hill from the pinnacles to a bay filled with black lava rocks covered with a green lichen.  These rocks, stacked carefully to form a huge structure, look like other Hawai’ian temples or heiau’s, but these are so old that no one, not even the Hawai’ians know its name or whether it was ever a heia’u.  It’s called the fishing temple, the assumption being that offerings to Keoniloa, god of the sea, placed here would ensure good fishing.  No one really knows.

After crossing just behind the heia’u, the trail strikes out across another sacred landscape, the Poipu golf course, scene of many of pro golf’s most important contests.  Why?  Well, where the trail used to run near the edge people fell off as the ledge crumbled.  They died.  So, the trail now runs along the greens for about 300 yards.  There are signs to make sure hikers look for golfers and vice versa. 

I stopped about three-quarters along the way and struck out off the trail to find Makau-wahi sinkhole (Fear, Break Through). It is a small part of the largest limestone caves found in Hawai’i. Paleoecology and archaeology have found evidence here of how the first humans affected the local biome.  This is one of only a few such sites in the world.

The walk back, with the sun higher, became hot and somewhat onerous, so I headed back to the lanai for a rest.

Travel

Martinis, Sushi and Jazz

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Full moon.  Clear night sky.  70 degrees.

Kate and I ate at Dondero’s, an Italian place.  Her illness is back on its heels with dayquil and antibiotics.  We now share most of our meals, cuts portions and expenses.  Makes the meal more intimate, too, since we have to agree on what we want.

After dinner we went upstairs to the Robert Louis Stevenson Library which advertises itself as martinis and sushi.  It’s also a jazz bar.  An eclectic band played old favorites.  We sat out on the balcony and ate artisanal cheeses. 

These kind of days and meals make for the memories which build and sustain our relationship.  We’re lucky to have them.

GeekWorld, Travel

I Feel Like a Vampire

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Mid afternoon and I feel like a vampire, driven inside by the sun. 

As you might have noticed, the second post I lost the server coughed up not once but twice.  Unfortunately, it really really likes it and won’t let me retire one copy.  So it will remain until I return home to a more stable cyber environment.

Today has been slow.  Real slow.  I took a nap, read.  Got up, had a snack, read.  Then Kate came back from broiling in the sun and we talked. Now she’s taking a nap.

The indolent side of vacation has always driven me up a wall. I like to be out exploring, experiencing, discovering.  So, just to be contrary I’m trying to see what others see in this complete snuggle offered by a huge resort complex.

Here the main entrance has an expansive view of the Pacific and comfy chairs near the large gate like structure that opens the hotel up to the outside.  I sat in one of those and read for awhile, then wandered over to Kate beside the pool, then up to the room where I’ve been since. 

Travel

Liminal Zones

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This is my third try on this post.  Two have been lost due to gremlins here at the Hyatt.  Don’t ask.

Last night.  9PM.  Night.  A nearly full moon, Orion high beside her and a quiet beach.  I’m a night beach person, alone with the convergence of land and water, an open sky above and a black lava rock for a seat. 

Waves roll in and in and in, persistent, ceaseless.  Wearing away at the land until Kauai becomes a seamount just like the others ahead of it in the long Hawai’i archipelago.  A wonderful place for meditating about liminal zones.

Last night Kate had a miserable time fending off what seems to be an attack of sinusitis following her cold. We drove into Koloa to see a doc and get a script for amoxycilin.  Then into Lihue to Long’s Pharmacy to get the drugs then back over here to get Kate back to her lectures.  She hates to miss anything.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Travel

Liminal Zones

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Sunny.  Blue.  Temp perfect.  Relaxed.

Cyber gremlins here, as on Maui.  Not only is this connection expensive, it’s episodic and occasionally slow.  OK.  Done wit dat.

Last night the moon was nearly full and Orion stood high in the sky with her.  The moon was bright, but in the way only the moon can be, nacreous and gentle, not harsh and brilliant like the other great light in the sky.

A large chunk of black lava provided a seat as the ocean pounded in at high tide, wave after wave after wave.  This ceaseless, persistent character of the ocean erodes the land, our habitat to make room for more salt water.  A graphic of the sea mounts and islands in the Hawai’an chain, all the way out to Kure, some 1600 miles from Hawai’i shows them growing smaller and smaller until, after Nihau, most of the former islands are now sea mounts with nothing above the surface.

Liminal zones have always fascinated me and the shore, where ocean and land meet is no exception.  Being a light skinned Northern European the daytime beach holds no interest for me, but the night time beach is ideal.  There I can meditate on the convergence of these two great elements, water and earth, and watch a third, the sky, at the same time.  At night there are few to no people and little heat.  A moment made for me.

This morning we went to Koloa and took Kate to the doctor. She does not like to go to the doctor, go figure.  Anyhow the local guy agreed with her that she has a sinus infection, faxed a prescription to Long’s Pharmacy and off we went to Lihue for the drugs.  We got them and drove back to the Hyatt where I dropped Kate off for her lectures.

Now I’m just kicked back, after getting the server to recognize me again.  Later.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Travel

Liminal Zones

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Sunny.  Blue.  Temp perfect.  Relaxed.

Cyber gremlins here, as on Maui.  Not only is this connection expensive, it’s episodic and occasionally slow.  OK.  Done wit dat.

Last night the moon was nearly full and Orion stood high in the sky with her.  The moon was bright, but in the way only the moon can be, nacreous and gentle, not harsh and brilliant like the other great light in the sky.

A large chunk of black lava provided a seat as the ocean pounded in at high tide, wave after wave after wave.  This ceaseless, persistent character of the ocean erodes the land, our habitat to make room for more salt water.  A graphic of the sea mounts and islands in the Hawai’an chain, all the way out to Kure, some 1600 miles from Hawai’i shows them growing smaller and smaller until, after Nihau, most of the former islands are now sea mounts with nothing above the surface.

Liminal zones have always fascinated me and the shore, where ocean and land meet is no exception.  Being a light skinned Northern European the daytime beach holds no interest for me, but the night time beach is ideal.  There I can meditate on the convergence of these two great elements, water and earth, and watch a third, the sky, at the same time.  At night there are few to no people and little heat.  A moment made for me.

This morning we went to Koloa and took Kate to the doctor. She does not like to go to the doctor, go figure.  Anyhow the local guy agreed with her that she has a sinus infection, faxed a prescription to Long’s Pharmacy and off we went to Lihue for the drugs.  We got them and drove back to the Hyatt where I dropped Kate off for her lectures.

Now I’m just kicked back, after getting the server to recognize me again.  Later.

Garden, Great Work, Travel

Meeting Luke, the Clydesdale

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We had Kashi cereal and papaya for breakfast this morning.  They no longer stock the refrigerator with absurdly expensive items and wait for appetite to increase their income, so we loaded it with stuff we want.  Much better.

Outside Lihue we went into a shopping center and bought some supplies:  water, Zicam (for me) and yogurt.   Headed north we passed the airport and found Wailua where we turned mauka (toward the mountains) and headed up to Opeeka’a Falls.   We ate our yogurt there and discussed the day.  Kate decided we should head back toward Poipu beach and stop at the Gaylord Plantation.

Way over-priced.  Some nice stuff, but boy they did see us coming.  We bought nothing, but did meet Luke, a Clydesdale who was on carriage duty.  What a great animal.  Gentle, soulful, big.  He reminded me, a lot, of our Irish Wolfhounds. He’s way too big to fit in the suitcase.  Darn it.

Lunch was take-out eaten at a pavilion overlooking a long, bare expanse of Pacific.  It was high-tide so the waves lapped up further and further.  Several Bantie roosters shared the pavilion with us.  After lunch a couple of young Hawaiian girls came along and picked up the roosters who seemed to like being carried, their red-wattled heads going this way and that.

While hunting for shells, I slipped into the water and went on, only in ankle deep water.   Found a couple of gorgeous shells, a cowrie, brown with speckles, and a spiral shell with little horns along the spirals.  A bit of beach glass worn smooth by the waves and a nice piece of drift wood.  Beach combing, for some reason, can occupy me for hours on end.  I love trudging along, looking down, finding this or that.

After lunch we went to the visitor center of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, http://www.ntbg.org/ .  We will tour Allerton Gardens next Saturday.  They were the royal gardens when Hawai’i was a monarchy.   Around the visitor center are several garden beds with various local and endemic plants:  sugar cane, plumeria, bougenvillea, Sumatran cherry, banana, many palms.  Of the plants native to Hawai’i over 80% are endemic and all of these are under pressure from encroaching environmental change.   Most of the plants we associate with Hawai’i like palms, ginger, plumeria are not native and they have tended to crowd out the local species.

Tonight there is a large welcome dinner for the crowd here to study infectious diseases. I’m invited. Oh, boy. 

Later.