Autumn has arrived in the mid-Pacific.  How do I know?  The trade winds have died down, the sun now sets directly behind our little apartment – right between Kaho`olawe and Lana`i  – and I really miss my chainsaw.  Last year I didn’t care much.  The extra heat was not terribly welcome, but it beat waking up to frost everyday for the next 7 months.  This year is different.  About the only things that mark the coming of fall on Maui are the shortening days, the promise of moving one hour closer to mainland time (HI does not celebrate daylight savings) and the position of the sunset as we close the book on another day in paradise.  Fall here is not in your face like in northern climates; it’s subtle, like a 2 or 3 degree change in the ocean temp.

And that’s one reason I miss my Stihl 290 with a 20″ bar.  Not the the most masculine saw in the world – actually pretty wimpy by most woodsman standards..  I grew up in the quiet confines of the suburban New South – a far cry from the pioneering and mountainous inland Northwest.  Saws are important in the Northwest and my little saw brought in its share of wood.  We were partners of sorts with me at the controls and the saw doing the hard stuff.  Didn’t give the saw a name.  I don’t think men do that for saws, especially men who wield the big ones.  But the ones who care, take good care of their saws, seeing them as more than just machines or tools.   Bringing in wood once determined whether a family would make it through the winter.  In Montana, we always had the luxury of gas forced air heat, but I chose the more organic and humbling practice of finding – and felling and bucking and hauling and splitting – my own wood.  Thoreau would be proud, wouldn’t he?

So this year I find myself reminiscing about how, as chilly autumn nights settled in across Montana and the stores turned Orange and Black, I would be sharpening chains, inspecting carburetors, washing filters in gasoline and trying to remember where I had seen that giant dead Doug Fir last summer.  All this work to make sure that I would have ample wood for the winter.  I equally dreaded and looked forward to the task each year.  Never much of a hunter or, as I learned after many cold and waterlogged hours, a fisher, I had to prove my manly worth in wood and warmth.  Costco could easily provide the sustenance and I stalked her aisles with the best of them.  Out in the real world however, I stalked dead trees.  Up hills, down ravines and sometimes in friends’ yards.  Summer drives often turned into adventures in tree-spotting.  Fall brought out the trailer and the 4-wheel-drive and at least 4 full days of man’s work.

Fall in Montana also reunited me with gas, oil and steel after 2 seasons of ice and 4 1/2 weeks of summer.  Made me feel good to work hard and finish the day smelling like the inside of a moped engine.  Turns out that 2-cycle engine exhaust makes a fine moisturizer.  Camaraderie almost always marked my tree-hunting (I needed someone there in case I severed an artery).  Usually an unwitting friend looking for either a thrill, or to haul in some wood for himself.  Couple of beers at the end always made the day – alcohol soothing sore muscles and filling the space that hard work creates in a mountain man.  Some would add that venison or an Elk steak would help fill the void, but I never quite went that far.   So today I find myself missing my “wood days.”

And my forehead is burnt, my lips are forever cracking (and sometimes bleeding), and my spirit is light.  We’ve actually done a pretty good job avoiding the burns, making the several hundred dollars spent on sunscreen seem a wise investment.  No one has been burned so bad that they can’t sleep – like I remember happening to me on the shores of Lake Michigan as a kid – and I’ve only had one peeling episode that could be considered “gross.”  Of course that was last year during the high school prom, so don’t expect any pictures.

The sun, La in Hawaiian (sunburned is papa`a la, or “burning skin”), shines here everyday.  It’s a big difference compared to Montana where the sun only shines about once every 2 or 3 days, on average.  I have a special relationship with the sun now.  I know when to go out in it and I know when to hide.  It’s almost like the relationship I made with the mosquitoes in Alaska; I respect you and the pain you can bring me.

I have never enjoyed the feeling of the sun on my skin as much as I have here.  In fact I appreciate many things more than I ever have.  Simple things like earth, water and sky.  I guess living on an island forces you to appreciate the power of nature more than continental life.

There is also a sense here that life moves to a more magical rhythm.  Like when it rains for the first time in 3 months and there are rainbows everywhere.  Or when you walk around a corner and discover a bright red beach bordered by garnet-colored cliffs on one side and a deep-azure sea on the other.  When people you barely know seem like friends you’ve had for years.  I’ve never been anywhere with such contrast.

Perhaps the biggest contrast on Maui is the difference between 10,000 feet and sea level.  Haleakala, the house (hale) of the sun, is not the highest peak in Hawai`i, but it’s high enough.  According to Hawaiian legend, the demigod Maui climbed up to the top to catch the sun in a net made from his hair.  He wanted to slow down the sun so that Hawaii received more daylight than the rest of the world.  Today, there are several strange-looking buildings at the summit where NASA and others are studying the sun.  On the Big Island, they study the moon and stars.

One can travel from zero to Haleakala’s summit in just over 30 miles, the shortest such trip on the planet.  Some people ride their bikes up.  It takes just over 3 hours for the best of them and there’s a race each year.  We were camping on Haleakala the day before the race last year and caught the groups coming up.  No, I haven’t tried, but I was recently asked if I wanted to.  Still deciding on that one.

Maui is just inside the Tropic of Cancer at 23 degrees Latitude.  Not that far south.  The air up above 5000 feet is thin and cool, just like other mountain places I’ve lived.  At the summit, it’s wool cap and winter coat weather; the wind blows constantly (we are in the middle of the Pacific) and creates quite a chill if you’ve been on the beach for a while.  Not like the 45-below cold of Montana, but cold enough.  I’ve been up there 3 or 4 times now, and each time my blood is thinner than it was the last time.  I get cold, but I long for the high, cool – familiar – air.

Haleakala is a great place to connect with the sun.  The guidebooks tell people that sunrise is a must see.  I’ve seen two sunrises up there.  Both were remarkable, but more for other things than the actual sun rising above the clouds.  At my first sunrise one of the park rangers sang a traditional Hawaiian morning chant, something I’ll never forget.  The last time I caught the sunrise (a few weeks ago) there was just a tiny sliver of moon rising – about 45 minutes ahead of the sun.  One of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen.

I prefer sunset on Haleakala, however.  The color is better even though the crater is in shadow, the red volcanic rock appears to glow in the longer wavelengths of light and there’s a better viewing area (on the side of a cindery slope). To me sunset is more peaceful.  Putting the day to rest and preparing to do the same for body and mind.  There aren’t as many tour buses at the summit for sunset either and maybe that’s the real reason I prefer it.

Maui was smart.  He found the right place to catch the sun.  Not sure the days in Hawaii are longer than anywhere else, but no trip to Maui is complete without getting up to the top and catching some sun for yourself.  Hope you have strong hair.

Enjoy the pics of Haleakala

I love 3-year-olds.  They run everywhere – from one room to another in the house, down the street, up the street, to the car, from the car, and best of all they run to you when you come home from work.  They always jump off the bottom step or stair, too – even if it’s only an inch or two high.  Maybe they are testing gravity because when you’re three, every rule must be tested (especially the ones mom and dad make up).  Three-year-olds also say some of the funniest things, like “Dad, when are you going to have your baby?” or “Why are we living on hot lava?”  Anyone with a three-year-old probably has a list.

And then sometimes 3-year-olds just flat out make you laugh.

Enjoy.

Of course, it’s funnier if you’ve seen Tommy Boy (sorry mom).

One of the more peculiar customs here on Maui (and in the rest of Hawai`i) is the tradition of going to a small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant, getting a big pile of food in a styrofoam container and then eating it with plastic utensils or bamboo chopsticks (for the more e-minded).  In a way, it’s Hawai`i’s answer to fast food even though it’s really somewhere between McD and a sit-down place.  Fast food isn’t in your face here either; I don’t recall seeing a stand-alone McD’s or BK, but I can get you to Jack in the Box.  The food comes out pretty quick – especially if you get it to go – and the packaging causes a significant waste problem.  I haven’t seen a plate lunch joint with a drive through… yet.

The tasty meal below is Kalua Pork with Cabbage.  Local pig and upcountry greens.  It was enough to feed the whole family.  I ate it all by myself.  With chopsticks. I’ve forgone metal utensils – except for breakfast; Cheerios are difficult to master with the wooden wands.

Yummy Kalua Pork Plate Lunch

For whatever reason, I had pictured Maui being a bit more progressive in terms of generating (or not generating) and disposing of waste.  As it turns out blatant, unsustainable consumerism is as rampant here as anywhere.  The difference lies in the amount of resources available (land) for cache-ing the effluvia of our consumer society.

Hawai`i doesn’t have any innovative solutions to the problem.  In fact, few of the people I have met even compost food scraps (one of our favorite hobbies on the mainland).  Looking into the trash problem, I came across some interesting information.  Check it out.

There’s no doubt that there are a few plate lunches floating around out there.  We should all be a bit more careful about how much we use, re-use and toss away.

Where the Q’s go, trouble often follows.  Something about the name I guess.  Here’s the latest.

Since 1950, only 5 hurricanes or tropical storms have hit Hawai`i ( at least that’s the best I could dig up for this short update).  Or maybe that was only 5 have caused considerable damage.

This week we’re in for a sixth shot of wind and rain.  We’ll see what the effect is.  I’ve been told some interesting (horror) stories by some long-time residents.  When the “upcountry” – everything that is east of the isthmus and up towards Haleakala (hal-ee-ahk-ah-lah), the volcano that formed East Maui – gets a bunch of rain, it causes serious flooding downhill.  For those of you following along, Kihei is immediately downhill from Haleakala, and because most of the soil is red from the volcanic ash, the ocean turns red.  The ancient Hawai`ians had a name for it and Tom Stevens, my new friend and fellow teacher, told me the word, but I forgot what it is.  Maybe I wasn’t really listening because I was more worried about what he said before that: “Be prepared to be without power and water for 3 or 4 days.  That’s the norm when we get big storms.”

My reply: “How often do ‘we’ get big storms?”

Tom: “About once a year.”

It all leaves me wondering where a hurricane or tropical storm ranks on the scale of “big” since they only come about once every ten years.

At least it won’t be a direct hit…

Hurricane Felicia "grazes" Maui

I guess we all sometimes feel, well, a bit vulnerable.  Should be an interesting week.

Today has been a good day, but then how can it be a bad day when you wake up and head to the beach for a swim.  Or when you wake to find that you have sprayed most of the ants in your house out of existence.  Or when you score a few chairs at a garage sale and then spend an hour trying to figure out how to get them into your tiny car (I miss my truck).

After a morning of swim and shop – although it was pretty weak yard sale-ing – I combed “my” yard for some goodies to enhance my day’s sustenance.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Papaya – the yellow one in the back

2. Breadfruit – the weird looking one in the front (there were more, but those are in the fridge). No idea how to eat these, but I guess I’ll learn.

3. 3 Giant Mangoes – I actually picked 5 or 6, maybe 7 or 8; the rest are in the fridge

4. What I thought was a Grapefruit – not sure what the round green one is in the front – it feels hollow.  Any ideas?

Oh yeah, I forgot the 3 tangerines that I picked.  Those are in the fridge, too.  Picked them first thing in the morning then forgot to eat ‘em.

I’ve moved into the new place – a “cottage” in the neighborhood Maui Meadows.  I’ve picked 3 mangoes (Dan Quayle must have had trouble spelling that one) and 3 tangerines.  I’m drooling over the papaya, the grapefruit, and most important the 4 giant bunches of bananas – all of which are still way green, and all of which are ripe when yellow.  Interesting…

Some other observances worth noting:

1) Ants and lots of them are mourning the moment I moved in.  I can tell because they keep a steady procession through the entire house – especially at night.  There are two main types.  There are the the wee ants,  so tiny you really have to get down and look at them to see that they are ants; they stick mainly to the kitchen window, follow each other single file and aren’t that much of a deal.  And then there are the big ants, big on my scale compared to the ants I’ve seen in my life.  These guys are all over the place.  They crawl up the walls, across the floor and I just found a troop in the bathtub.  I shared my shower with them until they washed down the drain.  They have long antennae and are about 1/2 inch long and red – but not fire ants thank goodness.  I don’t think they bite; they’ve had their chances but have yet to take a pound of my flesh… yet.  I’m not sure what’s going on with them.  They weren’t here when I first moved in, but their numbers are on the rise.  Maybe they crave the water that’s flowing again.  They don’t seem to be interested in food.  Not sure what I’m going to do yet.

2) Every afternoon at about 4 o’clock the sprinkler system turns on in my “yard”. The birds go crazy, like the thunderstorm exhibit at Riverbanks Zoo.  Pretty cool.

3) The white cockroaches fly (but at least they’re small).

4)Geckos.

Housing on Maui is not cheap.  It’s not cheap in Montana either, but you get a lot more for your money there – and you probably should because a good 7 months is spent inside most of the time.

Here’s a  few short videos of our new place in Maui Meadows, an older neighborhood adjacent to Wailea in South Kihei.  The building is technically a “cottage” because it is under 700 square feet (our house in Whitefish is over 1800 sq ft – excluding the basement – in case you were wondering).  But hey, we won’t be inside much and the best beaches in Maui are minutes away.

Maui car, parking

Bananas on the tree and two small bedrooms

Did I mention mangoes and that you can see Lana’i from the lanai

It’s small, but it’s quiet and it’s detached from the other places on the property – and there aren’t too many detached cottages around.  The woman who owns the house is a nice older lady who may be a bit eccentric (and a little messy), but it beats living in a condo or an apartment.

I found where the extra vowel(s) that were once included in the name Qunell have been stashed – Hawai’i.  This is the first place I’ve been where no one seems to notice that Qunell is spelled funny; I would have thought that a language that loves its vowels would be concerned about a name that’s missing one.  Perhaps the reason is that people spell out everything here, perhaps the greater diversity and more difficult names – I have yet to run into a Smith or a Brown (but I did meet a Black) – brings fewer sideways glances and fewer responses from me like “if it looks wrong, it’s right.”  To a haole, everything looks wrong here…well maybe not wrong, just difficult…and to a local, there a few spelling rules, so everything looks normal.

For those of you who are interested, Hawai’ian has 10 vowels (a,e,i,o,u and also their “long” sounds which are considered separate vowels) and only 8 consonants (h,k,l,m,n,p,w and ‘).  The apostophe indicates a glottal stop and it’s a consonant because it’s not a vowel.  It is essential, especially when two of the same vowels appear together like in ali’i, pronounced ah-lee-ee (it means royalty or chief).

That’s about as much as I’ve turned up so far on the language thing.  It’s worth mentioning that 1)it’s the only state where the native language is still a large part of the culture (language is a big part of the culture on American Indian reservations, but those are considered separate nations), 2)almost all streets, mountains, towns, etc. are named in Hawai’ian (the exception on Maui is a “town” called Spreklesville) and 3)it is an absolutely beautiful language to hear spoken.

A final observance about language…here, like in the South (of mainland America) life moves at a relatively slow pace, yet people speak so damn fast it’s hard to tell what they are saying.  In northern regions, people speak more slowly, at least in my experience.

Everyone is confronted at times with moments that bring them closer to the eternal.  I have been fortunate to have found many of these moments as I enter my middling years – whether watching bald eagles fish, a sunrise on the Tetons, or floating a milky-white river in Alaska.  Yesterday I added another  as I snorkeled in Ahihi-Kina’u Natural Area Reserve – about 5 minutes down the road from here.  Ahihi-Kina’u rests at the southern end of Kihei development and past all the big resorts of Wailea, the most popular visitor’s attraction in South Maui.  On land it is a barren, sharp and broken landscape of lava fields from the last eruption on Maui, about 220 years ago.  Underwater lives the best coral I have seen so far.  Fish, and big ones, abound because it is protected.   And that’s where this story begins.  That’s where I swam with my first green sea turtle, or Honu in Hawai’ian.

Hawai’i is perhaps the only place in the world where people can see Honu close to shore.  There are two types common here, the Green (in the video above) and the Hawksbill, which is more rare.  They live 100 years or more and don’t reach maturity until 25.  They average about 3 feet in length and 300 or so pounds.  The video shows pretty typical behavior – resting on and in the reef, surfacing occasionally for air.  They blend in well when resting on the bottom – as do most non-fish on the reef – and I may not have seen them initally if there weren’t other folks snorkeling there with me.

As with most of the world’s majestic species, turtles (there are 7 species of sea turtles) are in peril – due mostly to human encroachment, whether from developing nesting beaches for tourism or digging up turtle eggs for aphrodesiacs. I won’t go into the whole protection-human-bad-nature-good spiel.  Just watch the videos and enjoy, then get online and buy a plane ticket.

This guy is going under a coral ledge to rest.