Hawaii journal: 2007 part 3

Last night we walked to Waihina’s little shop, the Hanalei version of the 7/11. The leisure of walking drew us closer into the community along the road. Many of the houses are modernized and interesting architecturally. About a third of them are occupied by families who have been here a long time, with old tools rusting in the front yard, overgrown back yards, falling down front porches. Without changes of season, there are never any deadlines for cleaning things up. As with everything else in Hawaii, much is obscured by the huge fronds and spraying flowers. One old Hawaiian woman wearing a brightly patterned pareo was sitting in the front yard of her house, almost camouflaged in the heavy foliage around her. She was wearing a lei around her neck, and smiled warmly as I greeted her, white teeth in dark skin.

The hostess at the B&B, Kirby, taught me how to tie my pareo, and I wear it around the B&B. Kirby and her friends wear pareos when they go out, but I will not. I would feel fake. Kirby goes to hula class twice a week. The hula unites the women in her class into a very special kind of friendship, which has lasted for years.

We walked over the two-lane bridge on the way to Waihina’s. Efforts to widen the bridges on this part of the island were resisted by the locals, who wanted to limit construction in this part of the island. Since cement trucks and other heavy trucks can’t traverse the one-lane bridges, building is restricted without bothering with zoning.

As we walked over the bridge bullfrogs honked loudly in the water below. There were rings spreading outward in the water where the frogs were moving around. On the road were two paper-thin roadkill bullfrogs. Even after losing a couple of their number to automobiles, there were still enough to make a hell of a racket.

We played GO last night seated at the kitchen bar, with the host, Toby, kibbitzing. He arrived in Hawaii 29 years ago with a bicycle and $450, on his way to China from Wyoming, and never left. He makes his living with the B&B and doing odd jobs. His next job was painting somebody’s truck. He didn’t like his given name, Milton, and so named himself after his dog, Toby. The hostess is named after her uncle, Kirby. Toby thinks the World Trade Center was an inside job. Bush and Silverstein. One can pretty much think whatever one wants at such a remove from Ground Zero. I think the reverberations from Pearl Harbor have passed, and Hawaii, especially Kauai, doesn't feel like any kind of target now.

As we were leaving for Waimea Canyon this morning I said, “Okey dokey,” to Kirby.

“You’re really catching onto the language,” Terry teased. The language is all vowels and lilt.

We drove to the 40 miles to the other side of the island to see Waimea Canyon. Legend has it that Mark Twain dubbed it the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific,” but legend is wrong, because Mark Twain never visited Kauai. Its moniker is not, however, wrong. It was too vast to capture in photographs -- layers of geological eternity, with the Hawaiian touch of green.

Around the canyon were masses of white egrets. About 30 of them were spread over a soccer field, reminding me of the plague of geese in N.J. They looked like so many white flags on a golf course.

At the top of the canyon someone was asking if anyone had lost a dog. During a short hike down one of the side trails we found a transparent corn chips bag with a note inside it lying on a bright green towel. The note asked anyone who found a dog to call the number on the note. We asked around at the top, then drove down to the lodge, where the woman at the counter knew the couple with the dog (everyone knows everyone around here), and said it would be either at the lost dog pound halfway down the mountain, or the people who found the dog would take it home with them and call the people who had lost it. The whole of Kauai is like a small town.

Passion fruit, called “lolikoi,” is a tasteless experience in New Jersey, but in Hawaii it is fresh, and ubiquitous. The salad dressing at lunch at the Moke’e Park Lodge was Honey Mustard, with lolikoi wasabe. We had a Passion Fruit Chiffon Pie at Gaylord’s, the top end restaurant on the island, a former plantation house. We had excellent wine, good food, and delightful service. The dining tables sit under a horseshoe shaped covered patio, with flowers in the grassy middle, craggy mountains in the distance. Beauty is simply taken for granted everywhere you go here, though much of it reminds me of elsewhere, from Tuscany to Greece to New England. The difference in Hawaii is that you don’t have to drive to see the beauty, it surrounds you almost everywhere.

The religious wars started by American missionaries so long ago continue on Hawaii, as evidenced by the variety and persistent presence of churches of all sorts – far more churches than would fit the population. I counted the churches on the way back from Waimea Canyon today, driving the 40 miles back to the B&B. Here is a list, incomplete, of course, because I wasn’t paying attention everywhere:

Seventh Day Adventist (2) Kaliki Adventist Park and School Baptist

Latter Day Saints First Hawaiian Church

Holy Cross Catholic Kapa’a Missionary Church

Methodist All Saints Episcopal

Zen Temple Kapa’a First Hawaiian Church

United Church of Christ Church of the Pacific (United Church

Hanapepe Mission Church of Christ)

Kalaheo Missionary Church Mormon Center

Kalako Bible Church

The landmarks in Hawaii are mileposts and elementary schools. The schools are on the map as a church might be in a New England town. Hawaiian royalty left the proceeds from selling most of Waikiki and Honolulu’s land to a foundation for the education of Hawaiian children. There has been disgraceful fraud involving those funds, but they are getting it under control, and the money will once again be used to educate Hawaiian children, not to buy golf courses outside of Washington DC where the members of the foundation’s board can entertain Washington policymakers for their own purposes.

We stopped at the Kauai Coffee Company to poke around. They are the largest producer of coffee in the U.S., with 3,100 acres. (No sooner do the acres and acres of coffee plants end than the acres and acres of sugar cane begin.) Terry noted that all they needed now was a dairy farm and they’d have coffee with milk and sugar. There was, in fact, a dairy farm a little farther on. Or maybe they were beef cattle.

The Kona coffee came in different shapes and sizes, and was expensive. They had a tasting room with tiny cups for sipping each variety of coffee. I didn’t find it that much better, if better all, than some kinds of coffee I get at home. The peaberry was $16 a pound, and the decaf $19 a pound. It wasn’t worth the extra money to us.

Back at the B&B after an adventurous and tiring day, we played some GO (split the games, with me playing at a handicap) and thudded into our round yellow bed in the Pineapple Room worn out and in need of some rejuvenating sleep before another day on Kauai.