Connecting Flight

I was born in rural New York, and I live in the Pacific Northwest, but this week, I'm on vacation on Kauai.  Vacationing with my family is demanding and wonderful-- we are a spirited lot, who hike and swim and run down the beach and climb trees and get hurt and need comforting and constant creative problem solving.  There's usually a moment when I get away by myself to gather my thoughts.  Sometimes it's in the ocean, sometimes it's in the woods, but along with all the togetherness and bonding, those private moments are very precious and few.  This evening, with only two days of our sojourn remaining, I took a walk.  I had less than an hour as the sun set, but the sweetness of walking smoothed the rough edges of my soul, and gathered my thoughts together. 

I walked parallel to the beach, behind the treeline where three men had their fishing poles anchored in the sand, through a field where acres of low-growing blue and purple flowers sprawled, and dozens of snow-white egrets browsed for their dinner.  I wore my wrap around my shoulders as the mild breeze blew gentle and steady. The air smelled distinctively sweet, and a bird in a treetop fluted its evening song.  I walked north toward the coconut fields.  As I walked past the straight rows of cultivated tall coconut palms, I smelled the dry cut grass of the fields, and it smelled for all the world like a hay field in June.  It transported me back to rural New York in the summer, jumping from bale to bale, chasing fireflies in the dark.  This very morning, I remembered, I ordered the char-siu fried rice omelet special.  The fried rice tasted just like the kind I used to get at the lone chinese place in the town where I grew up.  My mother and I would return hundreds of beer cans to the grocery store every weekend, taking the $12 down the street to buy a Chinese lunch.  I found this, in my youth, to be a powerful kind of alchemy.  I felt sorry for the proprietors, whom, I worried, must be very lonely without any other Chinese people around.  I thought they might even be more lonely than me.  But today, walking down a dirt path on an island in the middle of the pacific ocean, so obviously a visitor in a land not my own, I felt quite at my ease.  It occurred to me that the Chinese-American restauranteurs might have been content, for all I knew.

As I passed a white haired couple walking back to their hotel from dinner, polystyrene leftover boxes clutched in their hands, I wished my customary wish upon seeing such couples-- that my own partnership might age as well--and admired the man's cheerful red sweater.  As I turned to retrace my steps, I thought of the mouth-watering smell of barbequed chicken I had smelled at the hotel earlier in the day.  It was the smell of a vinegar and egg based barbeque sauce, a smell which permeated my summers as a child. My mouth watered just thinking of it. A local poultry company produced the sauce/marinade, and my parents used it to grill chicken.  I recalled how odd and marvelous it had been, to walk into a hotel in Hawaii, and smell an aroma I'd only ever experienced in New York.

I stopped by the entrance to the adjacent hotel to watch a hungry-looking clowder of cats wander across a parking lot.  I counted 6, and tried to imagine what their lives might be like (there seems to be a significant number of feral cat colonies on the island).  I spent much of my childhood trying to tame a number of feral cats and kittens.  As I walked back through the field, and past the 3 fishermen, now sitting on a bench, looking out at the waves and talking, I was struck by how these tastes and smells today-- my breakfast, the palm grove, the chicken barbeque-- brought me back again and again to New York.  I am planning a trip there at the end of summer, and I'm finding I'm looking forward to it more than I was when I woke up this morning.

I've been to Hawaii 4 times in the last 13 years.  When I first came, I found my perception was very colored-- almost obscured-- by the preconceptions I brought with me.  My uncle had worn loud Hawaiian shirts, listened to the Beach Boys, and had pictures of hula girls on his walls.  My dad had watched "Magnum P.I." and "Fantasy Island", and had been stationed on Oahu in the army, in the Hawaii of Elvis Presley.  Each time I've returned, some of my preconceptions have been washed away, and more of the genuine healing spirit of this place seeps in.  Underneath the dashboard hula girl schtick, there is a genuine spirit of openness and warmth in the people here, and a gentleness in its natural rhythms.  The dynamic temperance of the climate is so soothing.  Even if many Hawaiians are Christians (there seems to be an impressive number of churches for such a small island), something of the spirit of this place seems to be native to many of the Hawaiians who have crossed my path.

Perhaps this is one of the secrets of traveling: crossing time and space, I connect my present with my past in surprising ways, letting the place I am visiting wash away some of my preconceptions, thereby becoming a little more myself.

I love to walk alone, but I always walk with my favorite walking enthusiasts, Ralph and Henry David, in my mind.  I'll leave you with something Ralph once said: " To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." Walk and travel, travel and walk.  Even 45 minutes in the space of 8 days is better than nothing.  It might even be enough!