Aloha

As I review the previous gushing blog, I have to smile. To say we had a wonderful time would be an understatement. We had a beautiful, growing time. But it is terribly gushing.
Thursday: Was determined to drive the Road to Hana. And did. Picked up a hitchhiker after we stopped and bought some banana bread. She was an anthropology student who'd been on the island for nine months (she'd just purchased a ticket, packed her backpack, and ended up staying). She became our own personal tour guide. She pointed out every plant, discussed the history of the island and the people. It was very cool. We left her at her home in Hana, and we proceeded down the most beautiful stretch of Maui - the Palini Highway. Amanda had missed out by staying back at the hotel (she had quite an experience there!). I can still see the green hills, old churches, sun slanting on the grass and ocean. It was like being in another world. When we returned to the hotel, Amanda related a horror story: a woman had plunged to her death from the eleventh story and had landed right next to our balcony. She had heard it and ran out to see the woman. How terrible for the woman and her family! My poor child was frightened out of her mind...and very nice to us after that. Here is the site which features an article about the tragedy: http://www.kitv.com/news/18608470/detail.html I reviewed all the articles I could glean - there wasn't much. Everyone was tight lipped about it pending investigation. I learned a little about who she was; I wonder about her life, her last moments.
I stuck close by Amanda for the duration of the trip.
Friday: Swam in a volcano in the middle of the ocean. Clung with my family to the side of a raft, that the capain enjoyed driving in figure eights, and watched whales, dolphins and sea turtles in the distance.
Saturday: Insisted on seeing the Iao Needle, and decided to take an alternate route to the hotel: The Honoa'alillani and the Kahekili Highway. I thought it would be quite scenic since it wound by the north west coast. And indeed, it was. We saw some of the most exquisite sights there that we'd seen the entire week. And if the girls and I were not so afraid of suddenly plummeting to our deaths over the side of the one lane cliff edge highway, we may have enjoyed them more. (I have since learned that people lose thier lives there, that rental companies tell motorists not to drive there, and tour books warn against it. No one told me! A later review of my tour book dismissed it as "adventourous".) It was truly the road to horror. You truly do drive on the edge, and much of the time, on your little one lane, you come to a bend, and pray there isn't a car coming in the opposite direction. There were little villages and houses along the way, and I wondered how people could live there and drive it every day. Another driver angled her car so that it was literally half way parked up the cliff so I could pass.I blew her a kiss. On one particularly high stretch, I came head to head with a pickup truck with about three people in it and tearfully, I had to beg him to either back up, or back up my car for me. Kindly, he backed up his truck until he could squeeze into a tiny shoulder, and I almost reached through his window and locked my lips on his in gratitude.
"No worries," he said with a smile, "that's just Maui."
Indeed. Maui, she is resplendent and terrifying; it's a place where life exists side by side with death. "The first time I smelled death and decay was when I came to this island," said our anthropologist. The island has many cemetaries, not hidden away, but there in the open public spaces, inviting the living to look, think, visit, and exist as neighbors. Rachel and I visited a cemetary on the Palini. I left a rock on one of the graves. In fact the trip itself was a result of my father's death, and was a memorial trip for my family.
I went to the island to remember my dad, for adventure, and to learn about a part of God's creation that I had never seen. I came back with something I can not put words to. But when I sit in traffic and look at the gray tight faces of others choked with life's cares, I can feel it, passing over me with the lightest veil, a sweetness, a feather touch.
Aloha.