{"id":21,"date":"2007-11-11T23:21:58","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T05:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=21"},"modified":"2007-11-13T11:06:29","modified_gmt":"2007-11-13T17:06:29","slug":"isolation-volcanoes-and-perfume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=21","title":{"rendered":"Isolation, Volcanoes and Perfume"},"content":{"rendered":"

44\u00a0 69%\u00a0 40%\u00a0 0mph windrose N\u00a0 bar steep rise\u00a0 Ordinary Time <\/font>Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon\u00a0<\/p>\n

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
\n\u00a0 – Andre Maurois<\/a><\/p>\n

Even though\u00a0the trip is\u00a0three months away, the travel bug has begun to gnaw at my attention, drawing me toward the Pacific and that peculiar place neither fully Asian nor fully Western nor fully Polynesian, Hawai’i.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Kate first suggested going to Hawai’i back in 1992, I said no.\u00a0 “There are a lot of places I want to see before beaches and surfboards.”<\/p>\n

She persuaded me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0The islands had me at the fragrance of wet soil, evident even when walking on the skyway from the plane to the terminal on Honolulu. It was so pungent, redolent of sailing ships and Buddhas, navigating by the waves and stars.\u00a0 Then, the flowers and the perfume of gardenia and jasmine thick even at highway speeds.\u00a0 Blues, so many blues, from cerulean to sky to turquoise.\u00a0 Greens in even more shades.\u00a0 Greens that climb the mountains, dive into the ocean, and all that wasted green on the golf courses.\u00a0\u00a0 Most powerful, and I do not sun bathe, the scent of coconut oil and warmed human flesh.\u00a0 Whenever I smell coconut oil, I’m plunged back into the sweetness.<\/p>\n

Each time I’ve gone since that first trip I’ve had a theme, something I wanted to pursue in more depth.\u00a0 One trip it was the isolation.\u00a0 Look at the map.\u00a0 Hawai’i is as far away from the continental experience as you can get on terra firma.\u00a0 One evening I sat on the beach on Kauai, listening to the waves crash against the shore.\u00a0 Brilliant pieces of glass sparkled in the black sky.\u00a0 All at once the time between the waves became prominent, a silence, a caesura.\u00a0 The isolation of the islands dwelt in that silence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another time I investigated volcanoes.\u00a0 We stayed at Volcano House on the rim of Kilauea.\u00a0 I spent a week hiking Kilauea and Mauna Loa.\u00a0 We managed to be there during a six week cessation in an eruption which has been otherwise consistent since 1983 and which picked up the week after we left.\u00a0 Even so, I hiked out on the lava field from the Puu ‘O ‘O eruptions.\u00a0 Hiking on lava is difficult; it is sharp, jagged and unsmoothed by erosion.\u00a0 When I got out of sight of the visitor area, which took over an hour, it was as if I had landed on an alien world.\u00a0 There were no plants, no buildings, no roads, no signs of life.\u00a0 All I could feel was the occasional heat from lava coursing through lava tubes beneath my feet.<\/p>\n

Not sure right now what I want to have for a focus, maybe just r&r.\u00a0 Write, relax, hike, eat fish and papaya.\u00a0 Something will probably come to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

44\u00a0 69%\u00a0 40%\u00a0 0mph windrose N\u00a0 bar steep rise\u00a0 Ordinary Time Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon\u00a0 In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others. \u00a0 – Andre Maurois Even though\u00a0the trip is\u00a0three months away, the travel bug has begun to gnaw at my attention, drawing me toward the … Continue reading Isolation, Volcanoes and Perfume<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}