My friend Nirlepa, her dog Blondie and I decided to go to the legendary Makalawena beach just north of Kona. This beach cannot be driven to without a lifted truck, but one can walk over the rocky black and gray lava road from the main highway which takes about 45 minutes. It was 9am and the heat had began to bake the land. You could feel more heat radiating up from the ground beneath you than from the sky above. I had put on sunscreen (which I thought I had put on allover my body) and we began our hike down.
The terrain was treacherous, filled with discarded branches of thorny keawe (keh-ah-veh) tree/shrubs that provided the only evidence of life along this barren landscape. Here the plant life fights for every drop of water to the degree that it must put up barbed wire on itself to prevent anyone else from stealing the resources it has accumulated. When we starve, we accumulate and guard what we have. The competition for resources becomes such that we begin to fear our neighbors causing us to put up these defenses. We do this by becoming austere, standoffish, spiky, antagonistic – don’t get near me! We can see this in people who feel vulnerable enough to where then create this kind of imposing demeanor.
As we walked we saw the landscape change very little until we got nearer the coast. We saw clear azure pools of water as well as swampy bogs some 200 years from the water’s edge. The sweet water from the underground streams accumulates in these ponds and creates opportunity for the keawe to grow tall as well as a few other varieties of plants such as palm trees, shrubs and bananas to occupy the area – a veritable oasis – a place to replenish, a place to rest, a place to regroup. Grasses, mosses, and all sorts of bog creatures set up families in this little oasis as the rugged landscape is transformed into a lush little micro-climate. People who have near-infinite resources, skills, abilities and contacts like this can become an oasis for others. There are few people like this in the world who don’t hoard, guard, and fear their resources being depleted but who dispense them willingly. For most where the resource is money, they will guard it with barbed wise. Others who’s resource is spiritual tend to share it with complete availability.
I can name one woman whom I recently met in Kona who’s an oasis for others. Her name is Gwen and she is a minister to a local church and spiritual community. The blue/black hue shines around her temples, and her cool, voice reminiscent of a deep and droning Amazonian chant. She wears a gold ring embellished with a large blue and green stone, and she wears a white blue and green mumu. Her laugher is like the peel of crystal bells in an ice cave, and her demeanor is cooling, calming, and refreshing. She is a psychologist by profession and a minister who lives within a spiritual community dedicated to meditation and living out the precepts of their master. Wisdom is her resource. Words flow from her like a fresh spring of cool water, and she waters the parched spirits, minds, and hearts of those who are blessed to be in contact with her deep and clear pool of wisdom.
Walking down past the rocky lava beaches we finally reached the first cove of the 4-cove Makalawena beach. These four beach coves are the most treasured and remote of the beaches on the whole island. Their unspoilt and untouched nature gives their diversity a true magic. Each cove has different set of qualities – each with a different set of people who converge upon it.
The first cove is a shallow 100 yard tide pool on the shores of a white crescent of sand, wrapped by trees which bring the white sand some shade. 40 yards into the water, the tide pool is sheltered from the waves by a natural lava wall. Only at high tide do the waves manage to brim over the lava wall to refresh the pool with new waters. As the waves brim over the edge they perturb the mirrored surface with small ripples that radiate throughout the pool. Otherwise the pool stands clear, motionless, and crystalline. Two families are camped on the southern shore of this tide pool. Their children safely play in the foot and a half of water and observe baby fish that swim in this aquatic nursery. The parents set up tents and hammocks between the trees that border the water and nap the day away.
There’s a single house built 40 years inland from this crescent. This is no man’s land, and one family claiming Hawaiian lands ownership of this spot has built a make shift house off the grid, and relax on their porch surrounded by their two cats and a dozen or so chickens.
The second cove is a small 50 yard crescent cove with mostly lava entry and some yellow sand. The waves crash against its borders giving it a foreboding water entry and a narrow view which detracts people from frequenting it.
The third cove is a 500 yards long and with 100 yards of pure white sand. The cove has beautiful sandy entry in pristine and unspoilt azure blue waters. This is the main beach where the people who have braved the lava have come to spend their day (about 25 people in all). The sand is blinding white, and the water blinding blue. The waves roil and clash on the southern shore while the entry to the north allows people to gently wade. Near the tree line people set up barbecues and umbrellas and share family time together while the kids and adults play in the waters. This beach is so welcoming, open, clear, exposed and refreshing.
The fourth cove is of equal size and depth to the third, but its waters are teaming with rocks that protrude out of the ocean like a half-buried and scattered Stonehenge. The entry is treacherous and only the occasional person may stroll this beach, but no one stays to sunbathe or play in the water. The feel of this beach is eerie, foreboding, lonely, and scary. Its peaceful beauty and tranquility gives it a feel as though the beach is meditating upon itself and notes the passage of time without human or animal interruption. I feel like this beach is representative of my mind – full of sharp rocks half-submerged which represent issues half buried in the unknown, half revealed in the sun – and the sea of thoughts roiling and churning around them. I feel enchanted by this beach – the mix of known and unknown danger.
We played with the dog, throwing sticks into the waves and watching her retrieve them. Blondie was so excited with the play that she wouldn’t stop playing all day. We were afraid of her being exhausted and unable to return up the path to the car when we were done.
As I walked I became present to the drone and hum of constantly crushing waves. Hot, baking, clear air and salty mists thrown up into the air. The earth representing safety – the sea the danger and the unknown. I saw how the Earth contains and embraces the ocean – gives it a shape to express itself within. The sea of potential would overwhelm and swallow all of life if not restrained by the Earth’s integrity – the innate knowing of earth that life can only be maintained if resources are given in fairness to each without overwhelming the whole.
Tired from swimming and being in a full sun, we walked back to the first beach – the tide pool and sat under the shade of a tree. The pool was now more still, more murky – some new water had come in over the lava wall and started stirring up and cooling off the warm still waters. Now no longer in stillness, you couldn’t see to the bottom of the pool – now it was obscured by ripples.
I see now how all of nature requires stillness in order to see clearly. If the mind is a sea of possibility, we need stillness to see the depths of our thoughts, our innate knowing - our wisdom. The mind is like a roiling ocean, and even if one trains it to be a reflecting pool, even the ripples can obscure our ability to see ourselves and our minds clearly. As a culture we spend so little time just sitting and observing life that we never obtain its profound wisdom. Many cultures have a practice of meditation – a practice that we in the west have idealized and made into various forms of fetishes that plaster today’s advertising, popular culture, popular Buddhism, and popular Zen. In the west, these have become hobbies. Everywhere else in the world the exist in one form or another as integral parts of life. In Italy you can find the old men and women of their small village walk out of their houses with a small stool, their walking cane, and sit on the side of the town square – watching the world flow by.
When this pool sits still and calm, its shallow depths are revealed to all who come to survey it. Hence it is known to be completely safe and devoid of sea urchins or other things that small children could step on. Kids and their parents enjoy this pool together as all can play and cool off before returning to the shade. Perhaps we roil our brains with thoughts and always keep ourselves in motion in order to not reveal how shallow we really are, or perhaps to prevent ourselves from feeling the fear of how deep and dark our thoughts can really go.
While my friend surveys the underwater world through her goggles, I survey the above water world. She looks at what’s hidden just beneath, and I try to look for what’s hidden in plain sight. We each see different things from our vantage points and we can never know the other’s experience of stillness.
In my stillness I realize that I’m tired of being at the beach, getting fried by the sun, and that my mood is turning quite ornery. Cooked, over-heated, and sun-burnt (due to my lack of attention). Whereas my friend Nirlepa is warmed, made more compassionate, and fluid by the sun – the fire controlling her metal. Me, I’m overheated by it. Normally regardless of whether I have sunscreen or not, I get done with the beach very quickly.
My enjoyment and contemplation changed into feelings of agitation and bitterness. Too much fun and frivolity - everyone enjoying themselves, drinking, taking pictures of eachother, laughing, frolicking in the water, and I can’t stand looking at them anymore! I need shade, cold, ice and water. Right now I know that I would reject heat in the form of a smile, a joke or embrace and any conversation – I can’t be bothered with engaging anymore – its too uncomfortable, too hot, and clammy. Too much pleasure can leave you burnt.
Nirlepa and I left the beach soon after. I bathed my already bright red skin in her SPF85, and I wore an extra shirt around my head like a scarf to protect my head, neck and shoulders and we proceeded to hike back to the car. Soon after clearing the beaches and the rocky coves to the north we started on the path up the lava road to the car. The high noon sun had baked the hot lava rock into a frenzy of radiant heat. You could see the waves of radiation rising off the road creating perversions and illusions of reality. It’s interesting how when things become too hot, we lose our clarity and ability to distinguish what’s real from what’s fiction. These illusions of fantasy can get us excited by their sparkling beauty but can give us false pictures of reality. When our relationships get too hot and steamy, we can become caught in the illusion of the mind – the illusion of the mate – as they disappear and a fantasy of why they are for us replaces who they really are.
We had neglected to realize that the baked lava road would be too hot for poor Blondie to walk on, and very soon we saw her hopping on it like she was walking on hot coals. Quickly she’s lay down to lick her feet every few paces. Within 20 yards she lay under a tree and refused to move. Our thoughts racing like water to come up with a solution tried to contemplate how we were going to get this exhausted dog up the mile long lava road and back to the car. We tried to hobble her along a bit at a time. After 20 minutes of trying that and getting no more than 100 yard progress we decided that we’d try to carry this 60 lb dog. That didn’t last for more than 20 yards when we both realized that we were both too exhausted and now also being cooked by the hot lava. Nirlepa handed me her car keys and told me to try and drive her Subaru down this road as far as I could and then we could try again, or try to carry Blondie in a tarp she had in the back of the car. I agreed and headed off. Pushing myself harder and faster to hike the mile back to the road while feeling the uncomfortableness of the sunburn beginning to set in under my makeshift parka, I made it back to her car. I drove it carefully back down the way having to constantly get out of the car and make visual calculations for which way would be the safest for the car without getting it stuck. Finally I reached a spot where it was obvious I couldn’t take the car further. Luckily it was not that far from where I had left Nirlepa and Blondie.
We talked Blondie back to the car, making her get up when she’d lay down and finally got her inside. Nirlepa then drove back up the road and a ¼ mile from the end we got all four wheels stuck and unable to push or pull the car. Frazzled, we both tried to determine who we could call to get the car towed and how much water we had left in the car for ourselves and Blondie. Luckily a truck was coming up behind us and stopped to help. After inspecting the situation he said that there’s nothing we can do unless we had a jack. Exhausted and no longer able to come up with clever solutions ourselves, we were so glad to see someone who had the mental resources left to help us. We jacked the car up and built a road of rocks underneath one of the tires and after lowering the car, we successfully were able to drive out. Relieved, we thanked the man for his help and were finally on the highway home.
I spent the next 3 days unable to sleep properly while constantly dousing my skin with aloe. Alas, another lesson learned the hard way, until I forget it again next year.
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1 comment:
wow, that's quite a story!
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