Arriving—Car Windows and da Move to Kohala

The Big Island Hawai’i west-side coastline, landing there, then driving north from Kona airport to Kohala, becomes a window operating challenge, maybe an electrical or maybe a manual affair; that depends on what type of car you drive. Kona tends to run dry and scorchey, hot temps even with frequent trade winds, kinda how clothes-dryer machine air gusts into your face when you first open the door.

While looking at Kona in the rearview mirror, time to decide whether the car windows need ascending, for going north brings wind. How much depends on which season—we have two in Hawai’i—either rainy or dry that your car travels in. I need my fresh air, so most often the driver side window stays way down while passenger side mostly up.

Once Waikoloa appears on the makai (ocean side), the heat evens out. (As an aside, Waikoloa village is a solid mix of familiar tourist offerings—Starbucks and other modernity simulacra. Condos stand ready for locals to sequester life indoors through air-conditioning.) My elbow sticking out the window feels like a small dog lapping the cooler air as it surges on this stretch of road. Yet as the auto stroll north continues by ten miles or so, we are meandering next into the harbor town Kawaihae, which returns the furnace conditions prone to Kona life; we got dry and we got heat.

At the intriguing Kawaihae nexus, the car turns an effortless 90 degrees into a brand-new compass point, true north. The road speed signs drop to 35 m.p.h. and as locomotion slows, now the deep blue ocean with those whipped white chiffon wave tips, are in parallel position, the same height as your driver’s side window; if an impromptu jump occurs through the car window, you can fall right in the ocean water—buoyant, warm, and happy.

The very first time that road swerve experience arrives, I feel a shift; now I am driving towards some newness, some project, or some mystery that could make me stay. Finally. Both windows all the way down, air streaming into the car, I make that turn in June 2015, for the first time.

For several previous summers, I taught English at Kohala High School, and the seminar ends in a few weeks, so those airplane tickets are imminent, money already paid for the return to Cali. A new lesbian friend in Hawi asks me if housesitting might work for the last weeks of our visit summer 2018. We grab the chance.

One afternoon my seven-year-old son and I are calendaring five days, time enough to make a decision: do we skip the flight back to California so we can live for good in Kohala, Big Island Hawai’i? The two villages of Hawi and Kapaau are in one region, Kohala.

One day during week two of the housesit, Darien and I perch ourselves on the wrap-around porch, built of such solid wood due to last a century or more; we are writing the pros and cons list. The attempt to model for him decision making processes is what I aim for; yet in my heart, I had made the decision a few days ago when another nexus point arrives at Kapanaia.

When we began housesitting, the day before the homeowner leaves for her trip, Darien and I meet her to learn doggie care. Two spritely mutts need walks twice a day. Mind you, the brand-new house exudes Hawai’i: one bedroom adjacent to a bathroom, small office space, a kitchen with a few bar stools, and small sofa beyond them. That is all. The wrap around porch is five times the space of the actual dwelling, stretching 50 feet or so away from the house that is maybe 600 square feet herself. Hawai’i life is an outdoors affair; windows all the way down.   

From that porch, the view spans ten acres, vibrant green country grass as far as the eye can see. History shows that King Kamehameha built community on this aina (land), cultivating the fertile agriculture land to grow food for 30,000 Kohalans; today, around 6,000 folks live sprinkled throughout the two villages.

Translation is that the two dogs, small in shape, big in frenetic energy, have plenty of land to run. 

Even so, during the first afternoon meeting with the homeowner, we trek to the ocean on a path covered in wild growth: fallen tree limbs, sticky foliage leaves, and slicing cane grass. Off we five creatures go—three homo sapiens and two canines—on the doggie walk (group exercising) that takes an hour round trip. Once the climb over a metal fence is complete, fencing that keeps the 40 beefy black cows corralled onto their five grazing acres, we walk on soft terrain since several inches of needles have fallen from the iron wood trees.

Ahead we forge until the precipitous cliff arrives; the drop is straight down to ocean rocks, several thousand feet of tumble. Your breathe catches looking at ancient dark auburn rocks, scorched by sun, scaling thousands of vertical feet up and down the coastline, the solid material against which the ocean pounds symmetry, those elegant ocean waves moment after moment, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, century after century—and longer. Standing here feels eternal—forever and only this moment.

Unlike the dry heat in Kona and Kawaihae, this Kohala region has wind, air pocketing you in unexpected ways. Even as midday sun beats down, a jacket works to buffer skin against forceful wind; like a next-door neighbor who brings fantastic soup one surprising day and then leaves that irritating note on your windshield about parking rules on the street, the following day, nobody knows what the Kohala wind will do next. I do not know about you, but given empathy for my own quirky ways, I just gotta love that wacky neighbor. Sometimes a love affair with geography catapults a life, so with Kohalan landscape dynamics, for me, especially the wind.

We sip coffee on the wrap-around porch when back from the doggie walk, a short transition time for Darien and I with the homeowner before leaving that day to return the next. And the first week house-sitting is super smooth in daily routine; the dogs are well-cared for.

One day I decide to take a right down this steep dirt road instead of the usual turning left to go on the meandering ocean cliff walk. My son is at the end of this path hanging out with another keiki (child) as a neighbor (an actual neighbor, not the wind alone) watches them. So steep is the descent down the deeply grooved all-dirt road, that I take careful steps not to start sliding all the way on gravel and grit. I have never walked this direction.

On the left is a cliff high enough for a wind-glider to jump from, a direct crestline that goes straight to ocean waves; tall trees grow along this ridge. Safe for sure yet zero tourist guardrails. And on the road’s right side is dirt wall 20 feet high draped in iron wood tree needles. The path feels like a beautiful tunnel where bright light radiates from the bottom of the hill.  

The last few careful steps on dirt gravel bring me to a land opening where the ocean creates a small inlet on the left, wide enough for promising waves to swell, on which a few surfers ride, and nature sequesters this bay by the familiar sheer cliffs—thousands of feet high—on either side. Rocks comprise the beach—not fine granular size but rather boulder shapes: grape, egg, orange, and toddler sized. I am still stepping lightly.

One 30-foot stretch of beach is lower than the rest of the crescent moon beach perimeter and pours into a pond that stretches from ocean up mauka (mountain) side, maybe a few thousand feet long by 500 feet wide and four to five feet deep; keiki love swimming in this warm outdoor natural swimming pool. The combo of salty ocean mixing with fresh mountain river water creates this significant pond full of brackish mud where crayfish thrive. Those burnt pinto-red cliffs are soaring skyward on one side of the pond while myriad tropical trees grow on the other.

I am transfixed as I scan in panoramic method, my eyes, camera shutters, observing and capturing the beauty; the difference is that my heart is not mechanical, and she decides then and there that our small family of two can make Kohala our home—which we do on 1 August 2018.

This beach-pond spot is called Kapanaia, known to a few locals yet not that many. So goes Kohala and other locales in Hawai’i. Endless beauty in nature exists and the arriving there is still partial even after several hundred years of colonizing. Seems nature reveals the discovery spots on her own time.  

After a while, my son and I begin the return walk up the dirt gravel road. On our way, we pass two pick up trucks that drove down the ravine road to park on the beach rocks. Kapania often has brief rain showers and ocean mists floating in the air. Still, these trucks keep each window all the way down, plenty of fresh air, Hawai’i style.