Even though it’s pouring rain, all the windows are open and I’m barefoot. I am wearing a sweater over my tank top, there’s a cool edge on the air, but it’s just while I write, if I were moving around at all, I’d be too warm, pronto.
It’s our last morning in Pahala, a former sugar mill town on the south coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. I am packed and ready to go back to Kona, up early because of the roosters and doves and other birds I can’t identify singing too loud, too early, everywhere.
I’m suffering from the vog — the volcano is so active that the upper rim road was closed yesterday because of air quality. There’s a massive plume of steam and gas filling the air, spreading out across the lower slopes of the mountain. The winds are blowing the wrong way so all that stuff from the inside of the planet is filling my sinuses, my lungs. My throat is raw and my voice is shot, my lungs are working a little harder than usual, and now that I’ve heard someone else say it, I can imagine that I taste sulfur on my lips.
This is a shame because while my respiratory system is unhappy here in this pleasant, green, noisy little town, the rest of me would like to pick up that sugar shack, the unpainted one just up the hill, across from the market, and maybe the 50s panel van complete with cute kitchen trailer. Then, because this is coffee territory in which, ironically, it is hard to get a decent cup of joe, I could open a little espresso stand, learn how to pull a cappuccino from the pros, and dissolve into a life with a ukulele soundtrack of my own making.
I hung my pua kenikeni lei on a tree in the garden where right now a bird is making a crazy squeaking clicking squeaking clicking noise. The flowers turned brown after first turning the color of an orange peel — when our hostess/guide/handler dropped them around my neck they were a creamy yellow. They’ll disappear here, falling to the ground.
If I’m remembering correctly, the lei is supposed to absorb your mana, your spirit. That seems appropriate — even if I’ve got the mythology wrong, I’ll be leaving yet another piece of myself behind when the plane leaves the tarmac and wings me back to the mainland. The flowers will drop to the ground and disappear back into the land and when I think of them, while wearing shoes and watching traffic out the bus window, I will be here, too.
My trip to the Big Island of Hawaii was sponsored by the Big Island Visitor’s Bureau.
Oooh, wish you were headed to Hilo, it’s super clear over here. Hopefully you’ll get your ocean dork on and snorkel at Kamakahonu and the reef that fringes north of the King Kam. Check out Kona Boys there at the beach shack for the gear and 4-1-1.