8:53PM 73.\u00a0 Night.\u00a0 Clouds.\u00a0 Surf back.\u00a0 Strong, cool breeze off ocean.\u00a0 Humid.<\/p>\n
Kauai is old.\u00a0 Old and moody.\u00a0 It goes from sunshine to dark clouds in a moment, from dry to cloudburst.\u00a0 It’s peaks sharp and jagged, there are notches between mountains.\u00a0 Valleys run away from the ocean in deep v’s ending in waterfalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A quarter of the island has no roads and no human habitation.\u00a0 Only 58,000 people live on Kauai as residents, though many others come through from a few days to a few months.\u00a0 Like me.<\/p>\n
High up on Mount Wai’aleale hundreds of inches rain fall each year.\u00a0 The Polihale Beach and the area around it on the south west is arid, practically desert.\u00a0 Great sea slides lie in the Pacific around Kauai, evidence of land that used to be above sea level.<\/p>\n
The longer I’m here, the more the land and the ocean speak.\u00a0 The bays, the beaches, small lakes of freshwater.\u00a0 The debris thrown up on the beach speaking of\u00a0 what lies beneath the water.\u00a0 The way vegetation and temperature change as elevation changes.\u00a0 The breezes.\u00a0 The fresh catch in the restaurants:\u00a0 opah, ahi, marlin, ono.<\/p>\n
Somewhere under all this is a process so old, so mysterious that it leaves no trace, yet nothing here happened without it.\u00a0 Or happens.\u00a0 Maybe it’s not under, perhaps within or around and within is better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here’s the twist for me.\u00a0 The more Kauai draws me in and makes me love her, the more I want to return to Minnesota, to our lakes, our rivers and streams.\u00a0 The trees and shrubs and flowers on the land we care for in Andover.\u00a0 I want to make another circle tour of Lake Superior, a slow one with time to listen to the lake.\u00a0\u00a0 Minnesota is old, too, and the process works there, too.\u00a0 The same process.<\/p>\n
As Lao-Tze said, “Whenever I sit in a room, the universe is there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
8:53PM 73.\u00a0 Night.\u00a0 Clouds.\u00a0 Surf back.\u00a0 Strong, cool breeze off ocean.\u00a0 Humid. Kauai is old.\u00a0 Old and moody.\u00a0 It goes from sunshine to dark clouds in a moment, from dry to cloudburst.\u00a0 It’s peaks sharp and jagged, there are notches between mountains.\u00a0 Valleys run away from the ocean in deep v’s ending in waterfalls.\u00a0 A … Continue reading Kauai is Old. Old and Moody.<\/span>