Black Sand Eden, Lunch With a Gecko, and the Copper-Eyed Cat

April 2, 2016

Sunday morning drew forth gentler than the day before.

“No beach shoes, just hiking today,” B said.

The family started out on a scenic drive through ever greener and steeper landscape, past ranches and stables hidden behind huge dark trees and tropical hedges, tracing winding roads and passing through tiny villages to stop at Pololu Valley Look-Out. 

They started down a rock-lined, steep switch-back trail that made AJ’s thigh muscles shake as she descended, pondering every path of her foot. At the bottom, a black-sand beach edged a marshy valley protected by steep-sided mountains, all of it covered in green vegetation. From the beach, ocean water made its way into the valley where a pair of ducks roamed the shores and little fish plopped in and out of the water. 

The black-sand beach was flanked by two almost-caves; they looked like the mouths of caves from the beach, but when OneSon explored them, they turned out to be mere indentations. 

As the family fanned out on the rocky shore to explore, the wind and surf whispered wickedly, pushing and pulling the ocean in large waves.  

The spot was a veritable Eden, the experience difficult to convey. Two-dimensional photographs weren’t enough. AJ, once again overwhelmed with her lack of skill to faithfully describe the place, sat and let the roar of the tide work on her senses, dulling them to any other noise, keeping her attention far out on the endless ocean as she tried to turn the experience into ink. 

On their way out of Eden, AJ found a plant she recognized. After growing acres of them in her past life in KY, she could spot them anywhere: a pumpkin (or some large cucurbit-type plant), next to something she’d never seen before: a giant snail the size of lemon.

Giant Snail

The family stopped at the Barbecue Chuck Wagon in the small town of Hawi for lunch, watching a green lizard/gecko thing flit and skitter around the fence as they ate. 

Back at the Waikoloa Village Ohana, they rested and checked directions to the next event: Mauna Kea.

Mauna Kea, measured from its base underwater, is over 33,000 feet tall, taller than Mt. Everest. At the peak, it stands 13,800 feet above sea level. Because the oxygen level is so low at the top, only healthy people over 16 years old are allowed up, so AJ and TwoSon were left out of the adventure, only to live it vicariously through pictures and stories. The bus that took B and OneSon and all the photographic trimmings stopped halfway up the mountain where they were provided with a dinner and time to acclimate their bodies to the thin atmosphere. At the top, as evidenced in pictures, they  literally stood looking down on clouds.  

After dropping B and OneSon off at the pickup point for their Mauna Kea adventure, AJ and TwoSon drove to the Kona region of the island for a tour of Mountain Thunder Coffee Farm.

The coffee farm was tucked away up in the hills crowded with wild exotic plants, mist and thick jungle. Their basic tour offered a peek into the facility where they sorted and roasted the precious unique organic coffee, but all TwoSon was interested in was the farm cats. 

Coffee Farm Cat

Coffee Plant

The tour guide seemed tired and bored, and didn’t want to be there, but he picked up a little steam and put a little pep into the tour as tourists plied him with questions. In a gesture of supporting small farms, AJ bought holy-cow-expensive coffee as gifts and some weird Hawaiian tea. 

Too pleased with herself for navigating new and exotic territory, while driving away, she stopped at what would have been a STOP in Michigan but was just a YIELD in Hawaii and earned the arms-up-in-ire sign of a resort woman in a white Mini car. Racing to catch up with and learn the traffic patterns (and to redeem herself in the eyes of the white Mini) she sped off to the Mauna Lani resort where they were promised a short hike featuring petroglyphs, pictures carved on rocks. But it wasn't what held their curiosity at the place. 

Pulling in, the creatures weren’t immediately visible, but after she parked the car, they seemed to be everywhere: cats, lounging on sidewalks, parking spots and underneath bushes, along with weird little red-eyed weasel-like animals darting here and there amongst them. 

The Copper-Eyed Cat

“I wonder why the cats don’t eat those little rodents?” AJ wondered. Later, when she found out that the rodents were mongoose, she understood. The cats aren’t stupid. They knew what they could eat, and what would eat them. 

A Petroglyph

With a little confusion, AJ and TwoSon found the trailhead to the petroglyphs, where an orange cat with dark-orange burning eyes befriended them, snatching leg-rubs as they walked. The trail was overgrown with curiously spooky trees. The low, angled, twisted branches of the ancient trees gave it an eerie feel and the little burnt-orange feline companion who followed with unflinching devotion added to the strangeness, especially when he looked up at AJ, meowing for affection, seeming to urge the hikers on, deeper into the aged wood. 

The Petroglyph Trail

 After fifteen minutes of the creepy, close, rocky trail and at the insistence of TwoSon, they turned back, hurried to the car, the sweet orange cat following, meowing in protest. The sad fact of the unowned cats lounging under trees, and the one rubbing against their legs, all culminated in a numinous discomfort they were glad to leave in the forest. 

On their way back, they stopped at the grocery store for some dinner items then waited to pick up B and OneSon from their mountain adventure. 

The first two days in Hawaii had been nice, but something was missing. In 2014 on their trip to CA, AJ was bathed in wonder and awe, sparked by differences, big and small, from her usual life and environment. Where was it now? It hadn’t made itself known, yet differences, gradients of the grandest scale were all around her. Exotic tropical plants made up all the vegetation she saw, the beaches were lined with black volcanic rock sand. It took mere minutes of driving for landscapes to change from verdant lush forest to flat prairie to ocean fronts to lava-paved wastelands. These things were all within her eyes’ view and mind’s grasp, but came sterile and fruitless to her thoughts. 

Maybe it was because she was so accustomed to beaches in the Michigan summer, that the Hawaiian ones didn’t feel right. Maybe she hadn’t acclimated to the heat. But no, it was something more nagging. It seemed as if she unwittingly packed worry, fatigue and the cares and concerns of home and carried them around HI where they didn’t fit in. These dreary weights came between her and awe. The heavy grey veil they made was difficult to move. 

But hope lay ahead in time and space; they still had a few days left, and the eastern half of Hawaii Island. It was too soon to grieve for awe, but the void left an unexplainable pain. 

Thanks for reading!