When I left the car keys in the kitchen eccentricity drawer (crinkly receipts, stale gum, gold thumb tacks, measuring tape, and various godly items), I later found avocados on the roadside. A cushy car seat and I are so often in the oneness zone, peaceful while warm tropical air breezes through the window. A humming auto zone is driving eye-level parallel to Hawaiian Island ocean, same view line as a sunset loudly flickering orange shades, colors gyrating on the day's canvas, so fantastically realistic they appear painted. I'm a big fan of driving on island. Yet what kind of drive would I have without a car?

One ambition I have—that is, drive—is to let go when inside an especially haywire moment. Upgrading an old car can go there right fast. We call our family car Mauna Kea, and she's a keeper. Purchased during January 2015 with 162,00 miles driven, just the one prior owner driving those, and next I took over the wheel. She is still bringing force to the road: 2003 Pontiac Vibe with 245, 350 miles currently. Why the name Mauna Kea you ask?

Because actual paint painted all white, she looks snowy or a reflection of those mountain peaks some 13,000 feet beyond and above sandy beach level. In colder temperature months Mauna Kea has snow fall and year round she is a deity mountain where ancient Hawaiian spirits dwell still. The family car still has plenty spirit in her, yet recently she has sat inert in our house carport. That haywire afternoon, I decided to walk instead.

Healthy good to stay close to accuracy on what happened that day since energy uplifts driving you and I around fuel on that God (Ke Akua) is in the details. A few days ago, which is now two months past due on September 7, I walked to meet the Napa Auto colleague. This is a guy (have not seen a woman driver yet in last seven years), or a clerk who drives 45 minutes from Waimea to our neighbor town Hawi, population 3,000 or so.

The driving road ascends and descends along Kohala Mountain Road and has spectacular vistas of the coastline Kawaihae to Kona, a thirty mile stretch of ocean, sand and recently poured lava hundreds of years ago. We villagers pay an additional $5 for the driver's commute; the Napa Auto clerk (or Car Quest colleague, for that matter) arrives to the Banyan Tree, a historical landmark in the form of a tree growing these last 100 years. Locals can often chatter in brevity: “meet at the Banyan.”

I often consider random exercise as a luxury and is the perspective I gave the one hour walk from my house to the Banyan. Blessed to be healthy while physically active and also rich enough in time, I could afford the ambling along. Further abundance later would grant me the chance to hire a mechanic for Mauna Kea upgrades. Back on the road she could be after whippity-fast repairs. Or so I believed.

One locomotion who demanded to slow our roll was the family dog Bell, an adorable 35 pound mutt. During the optimistic hike at noon, or Hawai'i blazing sun time, she took several rest moments in shade on cooler grass blades and I paused, too, wishing her health stay strong rather than rush her into stress. So, we took our time.

Arriving twenty minutes late, I thought for sure the driver departed long ago. Yet he was there. And the item to repair the car was not. This is a repeat performance and has happened several times. Dispense, you can, with trifles like my having already paid for the item with a credit card over the phone, ordering an accurate model, and showing up to retrieve the auto upgrade only to hear: “Did you order anything?” The driver seemed baffled when I asked for my purchase.

And so I took that as sign enough to catch my breathe and listen to the auto deities showing me that an automobile break had done broke. I was meant to amble. When I let go, let God inside the haywire, I had completely lost my drive to drive.

Taking a few steps away from the inexplicable news and close still, yet so far removed from the Banyan Tree, intention wise, I started walking. Across the small parking lot next to the Banyan Tree is a renovated grocery store called the Plantation Market. Here crisply cold water bottles are sold and I bought a double quantity one to share with Bell. Our house canine is quite flexible but on water I am not for her sake. Without a reliable car—or without any automobile, a first since my early 20s—we began the stroll or taking the long way home, adding time but also pedestrian ease for our return path.

In many far rural zones, a town's original dirt road later lightly gravels. After this evolution, a next one is pavement pressed over the soil layer and the lightly graveling. Finally, the long lasting poured tar, this road-version implies modernity, when the government crew builds streets to acclimate into future days.

Pratt Road is one of the dirt roads originating in Kohala's sugar plantation days begun in the 1870s. (Kohala is a regional name for two villages—Hawi and Kapa'au.) In these times Pratt is still a healthy soil, connecting today Hawi to her neighboring village Kapa'au where I reside. A direct pedestrian pathway if anyone chooses the route. Each village sparsely populates, maybe 5,000 folks in total are living lives across these rural Kohala country acres.

Standing at the Plantation Market's corner angle on upper Hawi Road, Bell and I finished the water bottle and replenished electrolytes—surely ready to walk on modern pavement. From this x marks the spot, we began a crawl-like saunter that meant crossing Akoni Pule (another one of the moderns, asphalt pavement here) onto lower Hawi Road, continuing for a quarter mile.

And voila—just before turning onto the ancient dirt path Pratt Road, I saw the avocados.

Three large avocados sizing like grapefruits rested on the nonexistant sidewalk for those are mostly in cities. True this country road is paved yet wild grasses are the borders. Where a scruffy grass sprawl grew in front of a home, I discovered the treasures and thought three meant more than my fair share, so I took one. Took easy effort yesterday to cut the large avo in half, for the plump gave way to a butter knife da kine swiftly.

In the blender green chunks went with a splash of Italian dressing. Whipped well, I poured the delicious onto lettuce and alfalfa sprouts, which are grown in a sprouts hut further along on lower Hawi Road—a significant production Lone Palm Sprouts has but the word hut seems felt-sense accurate. Tonight I repeated the process with the other half of the avocado. These quieter moments are recently making the most sense to me. Odd paradox to live more slowly present and having that qualify as drive.

Where would I be without that avocado? The meal fit so right into the evening after all that walking. We had clocked in several hours strolling eight miles during that day. Had I rushed into fixing the car (as if I had any say in haywire's universe), the avocado would have been lost. Mind you, actually driving a car slowly can bring other random fruit discoveries. Last summer 2024 I refused to drive on I-5 in California because the scent from CFOs—you know, Cattle Factory Operations—hurts my nose and ethics.

Parallel to I-5 is CA 99, another rural road with a dirt path history and now some asphalt paving in modern times. Located on this drive is the corporation with a soft name, Cuties. What I saw through the car window was a citrus bonanza, tangerine orchards growing healthy vibrant green, speckled with tangerine globes far into the horizontal distance. I loved that moment commuting on back pavement roads, still adjacent to a rural dirt one and this path adjacent to the horse and buggy trails (saw a few of these abandoned routes)—meaning rural, rural, and rural.

Driving in a car this cozily lackadaisical is a stop and smell the roses moment—or whatever is growing outside the car window. Tangerine rinds, anyone? Several acres at a nearby farm grew jalapenos and these drifted picante air volumes into the compact Nissan Versa Note car I was driving at the time. This was a family excursion and our resident teenager, my 14 year old son hollered, “That jalapeno smells good!” Made me happy to recall that a video game screen has merit creativity, sure, and yet nature will always have the best sensory splendor.

Reason being for what nurtures attention optimally is feet to soil, gravel, or pavement—any one of nature's walkways. From where I saw the avocado on lower Hawi Road continuing onto Pratt Road and walking for several hours is probably three miles. Where rural is as rural does—exit signs are entirely absent—the tread environment remains humid in dense sunshine. Some areas have only one foot wide, this narrow chance to move forward while ten feet tall country grasses or cane grasses sway over the limited outlet. Across this land a century ago, hundreds and hundreds of Kohala acres used to grow sugar cane. This “weed” we call cane grass is a remnant.

In the calm, walking idly as time and focus had granted, I applied a few gifted sobriety techniques taught these last 15 years. Numero uno is that prayers are neurocircuitry for the soul, brain impulses rechanneling towards serenity. One prayer that assists in humbly asking to bring calm in response to haywire behaviors is the 7th step chant familiar to 12th step programs. The last line asks for trusted goodwill, the free-floating energy that operates our human lives, to “grant me strength as I now go out from here to do your bidding, good-orderly-direction energy or god.”

When I recognized a long-lasting hostile pattern to prevent the car repair, I called on trust and goodwill (Ke Akua) to choose the next right behavior. And the decision I heard in prayer is to celebrate failure. Who cares how others might construe my family not having a car? Who cares that grocery day is a several hours long event given that walking one-way takes 45 minutes? Who cares that planning the day is artful efficiency to ask for shuttle help? What I heard in prayer was these apparent failures had changed quickly into successes since I gave up to give in to acceptance. My beloved Mauna Kea car was not to drive further and my real work was an inside job to let her go.

The process has been reconfirming sanity—that is, choosing healthy reactions to universal haywire. The 2nd step is another prayer that paves the path, for we admit that we “came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Because “insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results,” according to Stephanie S. Covington in A Woman's Way Through the Twelve Steps (2024). Whether in recovery or not, any humble dummy can eventually admit that the same ol, same ol really won't work this time. The mad scramble “to fix” the car has gone on for years in response to collaborative haywire (see next essay for why)—and so I applied mettle rather than metal to the car pedal. Why not just walk, was the spiritual choice I heard, and bring different behavior to the familiar intentional obstacle?

I chose to take a “significant step toward connecting with a healing energy already at work in the world...this healing energy, this grace, can become a guiding presence in your own life...this grace might surprise you...if you walk in the direction of faith, you will eventually find it” (Covington 49-50). Reason enough why I walked so much that day, and continue to stroll everywhere, which is now two months+ ago. I was continuing to practice my faith. Changed behavior to the same 'ol, same 'ol brought me immediate sanity and a sense of peace—serenity to say thank you divine energy. Plus, a delicious avocado salad dressing was thrown into the mix. Abundance pure and simple. I think I'll keep this kind of drive—free, lo-fat, simple, easygoing, and infinite.